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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive financial hit. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title topped five million copies in sales, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have a good game achieving reasonable sales results,” the COO and producer stated.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked the game's critical score, which currently sits at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team compared to what we anticipated and the final result turned out to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

This triumph has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the game including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, which they said 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 under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success then develop one big game after another,” the executive noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up plenty of debate upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the model for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, checking Expedition 33’s credits shows that many individuals participated; Sandfall contracted a Korean team for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure should there be next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the executive said. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a studio “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

Despite being premature for the studio to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell future passions, but it's important also to stay true to our creative core through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer mentioned that the project started with their director developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something we can continue in coming projects.”