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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY candidate, but also a huge financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner announced that this title surpassed five million copies sold, and that’s even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance was a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have a good game achieving reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer commented.

The CTO and lead programmer noted this title's critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the team relative to what we anticipated and the actual outcome turned out to be. When the score released the entire team was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

This triumph prompted work on a free update for the game with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the team will expand. “We have a great team under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for the project plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The studio's scale generated plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at the development group as a perfect example for creative teams. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team for animation work, for example.

“We plan to recruit a bit more certainly when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the producer said. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” It was stated that their core belief as developers “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” a developer said. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell what will interest us, however, it's crucial to adhere to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer added how this game began with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”