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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year candidate, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title surpassed five million copies sold, and that’s in spite of its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a surprise for the team. I was convinced that we would have a good game garnering some average commercial success,” the COO and producer commented.

A technical director noted this title's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, was “maybe the biggest shock for everyone compared to “our initial expectations and what the reality proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to the studio creating new free content for the title with a new environment, enemies, plus epic encounters, which they said would be out in the next few months.

That said, as the title expands, don’t expect the team will expand. “We have an excellent group under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the human scale that worked for this game and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” they noted.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, such as the famed director, considered this studio as the model for game development. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean versus large developers, a quick look at the game's credits reveals dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire slightly more certainly when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive stated. “But I would see rather a creative atelier comprising a handful highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a studio “is more to maintain the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

While it may be not the right time to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, but it's important also to adhere to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that drives our passion.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the visionary developing his passion title. We aspire that's something will be repeated with upcoming games.”