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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year candidate, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game exceeded 5 million units in sales, and that’s even with its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a surprise for the team. I was convinced that we would have a good game achieving some average sales results,” a key executive commented.

Another leading developer remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to “our initial expectations and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped the entire team were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception has led to work on new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, as announced would be out in the next few months.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. We've built a talented crew with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for our work plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” they noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up plenty of debate upon the title's release. Some developers, such as the famed director, looked at Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. While Sandfall was and is truly compact next to major studios, checking the game's credits shows that dozens of people were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, as an instance.

“We will hire slightly more definitely should there be next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they stated. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators that create artistic collaborations.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a studio “is more to maintain the successful elements that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of this project,” the lead programmer explained. “It's a bit too early to announce future passions, but it's important also to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that the project originated from their director developing his passion title. And hopefully that philosophy we can continue with upcoming games.”