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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a huge commercial success. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game exceeded 5 million units in sales, this is even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as an unexpected turn to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game garnering some average sales results,” a senior team member commented.

A technical director noted the game's Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the team compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome of the field was. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in work on new free content for the game with a new environment, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, which they said is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for the project and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that made this possible and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” they noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, viewed this studio as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team versus large developers, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals dozens of people were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team for animation work, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive commented. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio comprising a handful really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success originally.”

Despite being not the right time to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” they said. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, however, it's crucial to stay true to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

They added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated in coming projects.”