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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s despite its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success was a surprise for the team. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate market performance,” the COO and producer commented.

Another leading developer pointed out this title's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the team versus what we anticipated and the final result of the field was. Once it was published all staff members were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph resulted in Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the game featuring fresh areas, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced will release sometime soon.

However, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” the producer said.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. Despite being indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list shows that dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a little more definitely when facing a future production surge in the coming years,” the producer said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals that can make artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a company “aims to keep the strengths that enabled this success in the first place.”

Although it's premature for the studio to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” the lead programmer explained. “It's a bit too early to specify future passions, yet we must to stay true to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that's something we will be able to do in coming projects.”