🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous financial hit. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner announced that the game surpassed five million copies sold, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have an enjoyable experience that would meet some average market performance,” a senior team member stated.

Another leading developer noted this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the team versus what we anticipated and what the reality of the field was. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

This triumph resulted in work on new free content for the title including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for this game plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” they added.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, considered the development group as a perfect example for creative teams. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits shows that many individuals worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We will hire a little more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive said. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators that can make collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a company “aims to keep the successful elements that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — believe me, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” the lead programmer said. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to remain faithful to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director developing his passion title. It is hoped that philosophy will be repeated with upcoming games.”