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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive financial hit. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, and that’s even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success was a surprise to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer stated.

A technical director pointed out this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus our early predictions and the final result turned out to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception prompted Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for players including novel settings, adversaries, and boss fights, reportedly is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. Our team includes an excellent group with a strong creative director with a clear direction for this game and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the producer said.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, looked at the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates many individuals participated; the French studio partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” they stated. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people that create collective masterpieces.” It was stated that their core belief as a company “is more to maintain the strengths that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans about future projects — and trust me, efforts were made — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” they remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce future passions, but it's important also to stay true to our creative core through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer added that the project started with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that's something we can continue in coming projects.”