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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous financial hit. Developer the development team along with publisher their publishing partner announced that the game topped five million copies in sales, and that’s in spite of its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite an unexpected turn to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title garnering moderate sales results,” a senior team member stated.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the team compared to what we anticipated and what the reality turned out to be. When the score released all staff members were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success prompted work on a free update for players including novel settings, enemies, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, don’t expect the studio to grow. “We have a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that led to our success and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they noted.

Their team size sparked significant conversation upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, considered this studio as the model for game development. Despite being relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list reveals dozens of people participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We will hire a bit more definitely if we have a future production surge in the coming years,” the producer commented. “But I would see essentially a craft studio of a few really talented people that can make collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as a company “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, efforts were made — the developers understand their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer explained. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated with upcoming games.”