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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a surprise for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” a key executive explained.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked the game's critical score, which currently sits at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team relative to “our initial expectations and the final result proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph resulted in Sandfall developing a free update for the title featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the studio to grow. “We have a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” they said.

Their team size drummed up a storm of discussion following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals many individuals participated; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, for example.

“We plan to recruit slightly more for sure if we have a future production surge in upcoming years,” the producer stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop of a few highly skilled individuals that create collective masterpieces.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a company “is more to maintain the key advantages that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, efforts were made — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer said. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell what will interest us, yet we must to remain faithful to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

They added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the visionary developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something will be repeated with upcoming games.”