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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year candidate, it’s also an enormous commercial success. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title exceeded five million copies in sales, this is even with its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance was a surprise to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game that would meet reasonable sales results,” a senior team member stated.

A technical director remarked the game's critical score, rated 93 by critics, was “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus “our initial expectations and what the reality of the field was. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

This triumph resulted in the studio creating a complimentary expansion for players including novel settings, enemies, and boss fights, as announced would be out in the next few months.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a talented crew guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game then develop one big game after another,” the producer noted.

The studio's scale generated significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the model for a studio. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits shows that numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team for animation work, as an instance.

“We plan to recruit a little more definitely when facing a future production surge in upcoming years,” the producer commented. “However, I envision more of a workshop of a few highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” the lead programmer said. “It's still premature to announce what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to our creative core featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do in coming projects.”