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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner announced that this title surpassed five million copies in sales, and that’s in spite of its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game garnering reasonable commercial success,” a senior team member explained.

Another leading developer noted the game's critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success resulted in the studio creating new free content for players including novel settings, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release in the next few months.

That said, while the game is growing, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. Our team includes an excellent group with a strong creative director who has a great vision for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that made this possible then develop one big game after another,” they said.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as a perfect example for game development. Despite being truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire slightly more for sure when facing an increase in development in upcoming years,” the producer stated. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of really talented people that can make artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that their core belief as a studio “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

While it may be premature for the studio to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the developers understand what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, but it's important also to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer noted how this game originated from the creative director developing his passion title. We aspire that's something we will be able to do in coming projects.”