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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY candidate, but also a huge sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game exceeded 5 million units in sales, this is even with its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as an unexpected turn for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create an enjoyable experience that would meet reasonable commercial success,” a senior team member commented.

Another leading developer remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as the greatest surprise” to the team versus our early predictions and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception resulted in work on a free update for the game featuring fresh areas, enemies, plus epic encounters, which they said is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. “We have a great team guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for the project and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” the executive noted.

The size of Sandfall sparked a storm of discussion when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, viewed Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. Despite being truly compact next to major studios, one glance at the game's credits indicates many individuals worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people capable of producing collective masterpieces.” He noted that their core belief as developers “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, efforts were made — they are certain their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer explained. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to adhere to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

The developer added that the project began with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated in coming projects.”