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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY contender, but also an enormous sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s in spite of its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a shock to the developers. “I was strongly believing that we would have a good game achieving moderate sales results,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, was the greatest surprise” for everyone versus “our initial expectations and the actual outcome turned out to be. Once it was published all staff members were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph resulted in Sandfall developing a free update for the title including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, which they said would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. “We have an excellent group under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” the executive added.

The studio's scale drummed up plenty of debate upon the title's release. Some developers, including renowned designers, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We will hire a little more definitely should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” they stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop of a few highly skilled individuals that can make collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a company “aims to keep the key advantages that enabled this success in the first place.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of our creations,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell our next interests, however, it's crucial to adhere to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the creative director developing his passion title. And hopefully this approach we can continue with upcoming games.”