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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite a shock for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create an enjoyable experience garnering moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer commented.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s critical score, rated 93 by critics, came as the greatest surprise” for everyone compared to our early predictions and the actual outcome proved to be. Because when it dropped the entire team was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success has led to Sandfall developing a free update for the game featuring fresh areas, foes, plus epic encounters, reportedly will release in the next few months.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the team will expand. We've built a great team guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for the project and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that made this possible then develop one big game after another,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up a storm of discussion following launch. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, considered the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits shows that numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely should there be a future production surge in the coming years,” the producer said. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio of a few exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a company “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success from the start.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of what we built,” they explained. “The timing isn't right to announce our next interests, but it's important also to adhere to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer noted that the project started with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped this approach will be repeated as well for future productions.”