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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY contender, it’s also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title topped five million copies in sales, this is despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

This achievement was a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have an enjoyable experience achieving reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer stated.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out the game's Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the studio compared to what we anticipated and what the reality turned out to be. Once it was published the entire team celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to work on a free update for the title with a new environment, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, as announced would be out sometime soon.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they noted.

The size of Sandfall generated plenty of debate when the game came out. Some developers, such as the famed director, considered Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for a studio. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team next to major studios, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits shows that many individuals were involved; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire a bit more for sure when facing next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer said. “Yet I picture more of a workshop comprising a handful really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” He noted that their core belief as a company “aims to keep the key advantages that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

While it may be premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans about future projects — believe me, efforts were made — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of our creations,” the lead programmer explained. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to stay true to our creative core through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that the project started with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy we can continue with upcoming games.”