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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY contender, it’s also an enormous commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that this title surpassed five million copies sold, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite an unexpected turn for the team. I was convinced that we'd create a good game achieving moderate sales results,” a senior team member explained.

Another leading developer noted this title's review aggregate, now standing at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the team versus “our initial expectations and the final result proved to be. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph resulted in the studio creating a free update for players with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, as announced would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. “We have a great team guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that made this possible then develop one big game after another,” the producer said.

Their team size sparked significant conversation when the game came out. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, viewed Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team next to major studios, checking the game's credits reveals dozens of people participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely when facing an increase in development down the line,” they said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as developers “aims to keep the successful elements that enabled this success in the first place.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of this project,” they explained. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, but it's important also to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer mentioned how this game started with the visionary developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something we will be able to do in coming projects.”