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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner announced that this title topped five million copies in sales, this is despite it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we would have an enjoyable experience that would meet some average sales results,” a key executive explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the team relative to what we anticipated and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph resulted in work on a free update for players with a new environment, adversaries, and boss fights, as announced is coming in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, don’t expect the team will expand. We've built an excellent group with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for the project and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the human scale that worked for this game and perhaps create one big game after another,” they said.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list shows that many individuals were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team for animation work, for example.

“We will hire a little more definitely should there be an increase in development down the line,” the executive commented. “However, I envision more of a workshop of a few really talented people capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that their core belief as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” a developer said. “It's still premature to specify our next interests, but it's important also to stay true to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned that the project began with the creative director developing his passion title. And hopefully that philosophy we will be able to do with upcoming games.”