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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year contender, but also a massive commercial success. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as a surprise for the team. I was convinced that we would have a good game achieving some average market performance,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out this title's critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as the greatest surprise” for everyone relative to our early predictions and the final result turned out to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in Sandfall developing new free content for the game with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release sometime soon.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for the project plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” they said.

The studio's scale generated significant conversation when the game came out. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, viewed Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits shows that numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“We plan to recruit slightly more for sure if we have a future production surge down the line,” the producer said. “But I would see more of a workshop of a few exceptionally gifted creators that create a work of art together.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as developers “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success originally.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically about future projects — believe me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” they remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, but it's important also to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped this approach we can continue with upcoming games.”