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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year candidate, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title topped five million copies sold, and that’s even with its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite an unexpected turn to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create a good game achieving moderate commercial success,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, was “maybe the biggest shock to the studio versus our early predictions and what the reality of the field was. When the score released all staff members were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to the studio creating a complimentary expansion for players including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. “We have an excellent group under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for this game plus upcoming innovations. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that worked for this game then develop one big game after another,” the producer added.

The studio's scale drummed up plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as the model for creative teams. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, one glance at the game's credits shows that numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We will hire a little more for sure if we have an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive commented. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio comprising a handful highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as developers “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans what’s next — and trust me, efforts were made — they are certain what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, but it's important also to stay true to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”