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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY candidate, but also a huge commercial success. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded five million copies sold, this is in spite of it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success was a surprise to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game that would meet moderate sales results,” a key executive commented.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked this title's review aggregate, now standing at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the studio versus what we anticipated and what the reality proved to be. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception prompted the studio creating a free update for the game featuring fresh areas, enemies, and boss fights, reportedly is coming in the next few months.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes a great team under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create one big game after another,” the producer added.

The size of Sandfall drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team next to major studios, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits reveals many individuals were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“We plan to recruit a little more certainly should there be an increase in development in upcoming years,” they commented. “Yet I picture more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals that can make artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as developers “focuses on preserving the successful elements that made this achievement possible originally.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — rest assured, I tried to get them to — they are certain what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” the lead programmer said. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, however, it's crucial to stay true to our creative core through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer mentioned how this game started with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire this approach we will be able to do as well for future productions.”