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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY candidate, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s even with its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as quite an unexpected turn to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create a good game that would meet some average commercial success,” the COO and producer stated.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out this title's critical score, now standing at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the team versus what we anticipated and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph has led to work on a complimentary expansion for the title including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, reportedly would be out sometime soon.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the team will expand. Our team includes a great team under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for the project and future concepts. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that led to our success then develop large projects one by one,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the model for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely should there be an increase in development down the line,” they said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing a work of art together.” It was stated that their core belief as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to say specifically about future projects — believe me, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of our creations,” a developer remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce future passions, but it's important also to stay true to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They added how this game started with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”