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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game topped five million copies in sales, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as a surprise for the team. I was convinced that we'd create a good game that would meet reasonable commercial success,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s critical score, which currently sits at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus “our initial expectations and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception prompted Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the title including novel settings, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. Our team includes an excellent group under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that led to our success and perhaps create one big game after another,” the producer added.

Their team size generated significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits indicates dozens of people were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely if we have next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the producer said. “But I would see more of a workshop with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that their core belief as a company “is more to maintain the successful elements that made this achievement possible originally.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically about future projects — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer remarked. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell our next interests, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They added that the project started with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated with upcoming games.”