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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous financial hit. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title topped 5 million units sold, this is despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have an enjoyable experience achieving some average market performance,” a senior team member explained.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s critical score, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the team compared to what we anticipated and the final result turned out to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

That success prompted the studio creating a complimentary expansion for players with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, as announced will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, as the title expands, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for our work plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” they noted.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, viewed Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. While Sandfall was and is truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates dozens of people participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio comprising a handful exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that their core belief as a company “focuses on preserving the key advantages that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” they explained. “It's a bit too early to specify future passions, but it's important also to stay true to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

They added that the project began with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that's something will be repeated in coming projects.”