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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game surpassed five million copies sold, this is despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a shock for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create an enjoyable experience garnering moderate commercial success,” a senior team member stated.

Another leading developer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, was the most surprising moment to the studio compared to “our initial expectations and the final result of the field was. Once it was published everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

That success has led to the studio creating new free content for the title with a new environment, adversaries, and boss fights, reportedly is coming sometime soon.

That said, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. We've built a talented crew under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that worked for this game and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive said.

The size of Sandfall sparked significant conversation when the game came out. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being relatively lean versus large developers, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals dozens of people participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more certainly when facing an increase in development down the line,” the producer said. “But I would see rather a creative atelier comprising a handful really talented people that can make collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that their core belief as a company “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's premature for the studio to reveal exact details what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of what we built,” they remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, yet we must to adhere to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

They mentioned how this game started with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy we can continue in coming projects.”