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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s even with it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a shock for the team. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title achieving moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer commented.

Another leading developer remarked that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as “maybe the biggest shock for everyone compared to our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph resulted in Sandfall developing new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, foes, plus epic encounters, which they said would be out in the next few months.

That said, while the game is growing, don’t expect the studio to grow. Our team includes an excellent group under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for this game plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” they said.

The size of Sandfall sparked plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Despite being indeed a small team versus large developers, one glance at the game's credits shows that many individuals participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly if we have an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive stated. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio comprising a handful really talented people capable of producing collective masterpieces.” He noted that their core belief as developers “is more to maintain the strengths that enabled this success originally.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” they said. “It's still premature to specify what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer added how this game originated from the creative director pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped that philosophy we can continue as well for future productions.”