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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game topped five million copies sold, this is despite it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a surprise to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title garnering moderate commercial success,” a senior team member stated.

A technical director pointed out that Clair Obscur’s critical score, rated 93 by critics, was the most surprising moment to the team compared to our early predictions and the final result of the field was. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to work on a free update for the title with a new environment, enemies, plus epic encounters, which they said will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. “We have a great team guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the human scale that led to our success and perhaps create large projects one by one,” the producer noted.

Their team size generated plenty of debate when the game came out. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as the model for game development. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, checking the title's staff list indicates dozens of people were involved; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire a bit more definitely when facing a future production surge in the coming years,” the producer stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of really talented people capable of producing artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that their core belief as a studio “is more to maintain the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans what’s next — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of what we built,” the lead programmer explained. “It's still premature to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They noted that the project originated from their director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something will be repeated in coming projects.”