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

This achievement came as quite a surprise to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game garnering some average market performance,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the team compared to our early predictions and what the reality proved to be. When the score released the entire team was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success has led to the studio creating new free content for the game with a new environment, adversaries, and boss fights, which they said is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for this game and future concepts. We'd like to keep the human scale that worked for this game and perhaps create one big game after another,” the producer said.

The studio's scale drummed up plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, viewed Sandfall’s team as the model for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team versus large developers, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits shows that many individuals were involved; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a little more for sure should there be next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop of a few really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer said. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell what will interest us, but it's important also to stay true to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer noted that the project started with their director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something we can continue in coming projects.”