🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive GOTY contender, it’s also an enormous commercial success. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as a surprise for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game garnering reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer stated.

Another leading developer noted this title's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the studio compared to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome proved to be. Because when it dropped all staff members were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

That success resulted in the studio creating new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, reportedly will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have a talented crew guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for the project and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that led to our success then develop one big game after another,” the producer said.

Their team size drummed up a storm of discussion upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, considered this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list indicates many individuals participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We plan to recruit a little more definitely if we have an increase in development down the line,” the producer stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the key advantages that enabled this success originally.”

Despite being premature for the studio to reveal exact details about future projects — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of this project,” they said. “It's still premature to be able to tell our next interests, however, it's crucial to stay true to our creative core through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire this approach we will be able to do in coming projects.”