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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s even with it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite a shock for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game achieving reasonable sales results,” a key executive stated.

A technical director pointed out this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the studio relative to what we anticipated and what the reality of the field was. Because when it dropped all staff members were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph has led to the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the game with a new environment, adversaries, plus epic encounters, which they said would be out in the next few months.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. We've built an excellent group under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that led to our success and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive noted.

The studio's scale generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, looked at this studio as a perfect example for creative teams. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates dozens of people worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We will hire a bit more definitely if we have next an upcoming production peak down the line,” they said. “But I would see essentially a craft studio comprising a handful exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Despite being not the right time to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” a developer explained. “It's still premature to announce future passions, but it's important also to adhere to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer noted that the project originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we can continue as well for future productions.”