🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded five million copies sold, this is even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as an unexpected turn for the team. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title garnering some average market performance,” a senior team member explained.

Another leading developer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the studio versus our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph prompted the studio creating a free update for the game with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, reportedly will release in the next few months.

That said, as the title expands, don’t expect the team will expand. We've built a talented crew under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for the project plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that led to our success then develop large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The studio's scale drummed up plenty of debate following launch. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. Despite being relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list indicates numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We will hire slightly more for sure when facing a future production surge in the coming years,” they stated. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of really talented people that can make collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that their core belief as a studio “is more to maintain the successful elements that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer explained. “It's still premature to announce future passions, yet we must to adhere to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

They noted how this game started with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire this approach we will be able to do as well for future productions.”