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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive GOTY candidate, but also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title topped five million copies in sales, and that’s in spite of its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a shock to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create an enjoyable experience garnering reasonable market performance,” a key executive explained.

Another leading developer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. Because when it dropped all staff members celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception resulted in the studio creating a free update for the title with a new environment, enemies, plus epic encounters, which they said will release sometime soon.

However, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. “We have a talented crew under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for this game plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The studio's scale generated plenty of debate when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, considered the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Despite being relatively lean next to major studios, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates many individuals were involved; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, for example.

“We will hire slightly more definitely should there be next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of highly skilled individuals that can make collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that their core belief as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success in the first place.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of what we built,” they explained. “It's still premature to announce future passions, but it's important also to remain faithful to our creative core through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer noted how this game began with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something will be repeated in coming projects.”