🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year contender, but also a massive financial hit. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game surpassed 5 million units in sales, this is despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have an enjoyable experience garnering some average sales results,” a key executive explained.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, was the most surprising moment to the team compared to our early predictions and what the reality proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

That success prompted work on a complimentary expansion for the title with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, as announced is coming in the next few months.

That said, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. “We have a talented crew guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for this game and future concepts. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” the executive noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up a storm of discussion when the game came out. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, viewed Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. While Sandfall was and is truly compact next to major studios, checking the title's staff list shows that numerous contributors were involved; the French studio partnered with overseas animators handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that enabled this success from the start.”

While it may be not the right time to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of our creations,” they said. “It's a bit too early to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to stay true to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the visionary developing his passion title. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do in coming projects.”