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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we would have a good game that would meet some average commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as the most surprising moment for everyone compared to “our initial expectations and what the reality of the field was. Once it was published all staff members was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception prompted Sandfall developing new free content for the title with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, reportedly is coming sometime soon.

That said, while the game is growing, don’t expect the team will expand. We've built a great team with a strong creative director who has a great vision for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that led to our success then develop large projects one by one,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall generated plenty of debate upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals were involved; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We will hire a little more for sure should there be next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive said. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier with a small number of really talented people capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that their core belief as developers “aims to keep the strengths that enabled this success originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — they are certain what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of what we built,” the lead programmer explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell our next interests, but it's important also to adhere to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The lead programmer added how this game originated from the creative director developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated in coming projects.”