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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year candidate, but also a massive sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner announced that this title exceeded 5 million units sold, this is even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a surprise to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a good game that would meet some average market performance,” the COO and producer commented.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out the game's review aggregate, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the team compared to what we anticipated and the final result proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to the studio creating a complimentary expansion for players with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, which they said will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. We've built an excellent group with a strong creative director with a clear direction for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the human scale that worked for this game then develop major titles sequentially,” the producer noted.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits shows that many individuals worked on it; the French studio partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We plan to recruit a little more definitely if we have a future production surge in the coming years,” the producer stated. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier with a small number of highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that enabled this success in the first place.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details what’s next — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer remarked. “The timing isn't right to specify what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer mentioned how this game started with the visionary developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something will be repeated with upcoming games.”