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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game topped 5 million units sold, this is in spite of it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success was an unexpected turn to the developers. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title that would meet reasonable sales results,” a key executive explained.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock to the team versus our early predictions and the final result turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to work on a complimentary expansion for players with a new environment, enemies, along with challenging bosses, as announced is coming sometime soon.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built a talented crew guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” the executive added.

The size of Sandfall drummed up a storm of discussion upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered this studio as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits indicates numerous contributors participated; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a little more certainly should there be a future production surge in upcoming years,” they stated. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people that can make collective masterpieces.” He noted that their core belief as developers “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” a developer said. “It's a bit too early to announce future passions, however, it's crucial to stay true to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that the project started with their director developing his passion title. We aspire this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”