🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year candidate, but also a massive sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded five million copies sold, this is even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a solid title that would meet reasonable market performance,” a senior team member explained.

Another leading developer pointed out this title's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock for everyone compared to what we anticipated and what the reality of the field was. Because when it dropped the entire team celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing a free update for the title with a new environment, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, reportedly is coming sometime soon.

However, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” they said.

The size of Sandfall sparked plenty of debate when the game came out. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, looked at the development group as the model for a studio. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, checking the game's credits shows that numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely should there be an increase in development down the line,” the executive stated. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create a work of art together.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a studio “is more to maintain the strengths that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, efforts were made — they are certain what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” they said. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell future passions, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They noted that the project began with the creative director developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something we can continue as well for future productions.”