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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded five million copies sold, this is despite its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title achieving some average commercial success,” a key executive stated.

The CTO and lead programmer noted the game's Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the team relative to our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success prompted the studio creating new free content for players including novel settings, enemies, and boss fights, which they said will release sometime soon.

That said, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. “We have a great team with a strong creative director who has a great vision for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that led to our success and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” they said.

The studio's scale sparked a storm of discussion when the game came out. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, looked at Sandfall’s team as the model for game development. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list shows that many individuals were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive stated. “Yet I picture more of a workshop comprising a handful exceptionally gifted creators that create a work of art together.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “is more to maintain the successful elements that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, efforts were made — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer explained. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, yet we must to remain faithful to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer added how this game originated from the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire this approach we can continue as well for future productions.”