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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as quite a surprise to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title achieving moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

Another leading developer pointed out this title's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as the most surprising moment for everyone versus our early predictions and what the reality turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception prompted work on a free update for the title featuring fresh areas, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly is coming in the next few months.

That said, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. We've built a talented crew with a strong creative director with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the human scale that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” the executive noted.

The size of Sandfall sparked plenty of debate upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at the title's staff list shows that numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely when facing an increase in development in upcoming years,” they commented. “But I would see essentially a craft studio with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create a work of art together.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as a company “aims to keep the successful elements that made this achievement possible originally.”

While it may be premature for the studio to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the team does know what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell what will interest us, but it's important also to remain faithful to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

They added that the project started with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”