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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous sales triumph. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title exceeded 5 million units in sales, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have a good game garnering some average commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

A technical director pointed out this title's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the team versus what we anticipated and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published the entire team were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

That success resulted in Sandfall developing a free update for players with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, don’t expect the team will expand. Our team includes an excellent group with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for our work and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” they said.

The studio's scale sparked plenty of debate when the game came out. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits indicates numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer said. “But I would see more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals capable of producing collective masterpieces.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be premature for the studio to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer said. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell future passions, but it's important also to remain faithful to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The developer added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that's something will be repeated in coming projects.”