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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY contender, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s in spite of it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game garnering reasonable sales results,” a key executive stated.

A technical director noted this title's critical score, now standing at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock to the team versus our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph has led to the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the title with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced would be out sometime soon.

However, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have an excellent group guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that worked for this game and do maybe large projects one by one,” they added.

Their team size generated significant conversation following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for creative teams. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals many individuals participated; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, as an instance.

“We will hire a little more certainly when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio comprising a handful really talented people capable of producing collective masterpieces.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as developers “aims to keep the successful elements that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, efforts were made — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” a developer remarked. “It's still premature to specify our next interests, but it's important also to remain faithful to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer added how this game began with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that philosophy will be repeated with upcoming games.”