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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game surpassed 5 million units sold, and that’s in spite of it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have a good game achieving some average market performance,” a key executive commented.

Another leading developer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s critical score, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the team compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome turned out to be. Once it was published all staff members was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success has led to Sandfall developing new free content for the title featuring fresh areas, foes, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. We've built a talented crew with a strong creative director who has a great vision for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the human scale that led to our success then develop major titles sequentially,” they noted.

The studio's scale sparked plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Despite being relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits reveals many individuals worked on it; the French studio partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly should there be a future production surge in the coming years,” they said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of really talented people that create collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans about future projects — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” the lead programmer said. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell future passions, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the creative director developing his passion title. We aspire this approach we can continue in coming projects.”