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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game topped five million copies sold, this is in spite of it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game garnering moderate sales results,” a key executive explained.

Another leading developer remarked this title's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the team relative to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome of the field was. Because when it dropped all staff members celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception has led to work on a free update for the game with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, as announced would be out in the next few months.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes a talented crew under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that made this possible then develop one big game after another,” the producer added.

The studio's scale generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We will hire slightly more certainly when facing next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the executive commented. “But I would see essentially a craft studio of a few exceptionally gifted creators that can make artistic collaborations.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as a company “aims to keep the key advantages that enabled this success in the first place.”

While it may be not the right time to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” a developer remarked. “The timing isn't right to announce our next interests, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They noted that the project began with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do in coming projects.”