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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, this is even with its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as quite a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we would have a good game garnering some average sales results,” a senior team member stated.

Another leading developer noted the game's critical score, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team versus our early predictions and the final result proved to be. When the score released the entire team was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception resulted in the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the game with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, which they said is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. “We have a great team under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for this game plus upcoming innovations. We'd like to keep the human scale that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” the producer said.

Their team size sparked significant conversation upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for a studio. Despite being truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates many individuals participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit a little more definitely if we have next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the producer stated. “Yet I picture more of a workshop comprising a handful highly skilled individuals capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as developers “is more to maintain the key advantages that made this achievement possible originally.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to say specifically about future projects — rest assured, efforts were made — they are certain their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell what will interest us, but it's important also to remain faithful to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”