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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title topped 5 million units sold, and that’s even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a shock to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create an enjoyable experience garnering moderate market performance,” a senior team member commented.

A technical director remarked this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment for everyone compared to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome turned out to be. When the score released everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the game featuring fresh areas, adversaries, and boss fights, as announced would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, while the game is growing, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director with a clear direction for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they noted.

The size of Sandfall generated plenty of debate following launch. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at the development group as a perfect example for creative teams. Despite being indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the game's credits shows that dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, for example.

“We will hire slightly more for sure should there be next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they commented. “Yet I picture more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals that can make a work of art together.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details what’s next — believe me, I tried to get them to — they are certain what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” they explained. “It's still premature to announce our next interests, but it's important also to remain faithful to our creative core through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully this approach will be repeated with upcoming games.”