🔗 Share this article

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY candidate, but also a huge commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a solid title that would meet some average market performance,” a key executive explained.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team relative to our early predictions and the actual outcome turned out to be. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph resulted in work on a free update for players with a new environment, adversaries, and boss fights, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. Our team includes an excellent group guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall sparked plenty of debate upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. Despite being indeed a small team versus large developers, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits reveals dozens of people were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“We will hire a little more certainly when facing an increase in development in upcoming years,” the producer said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people that can make collective masterpieces.” He noted that their core belief as developers “is more to maintain the key advantages that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

Although it's premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans what’s next — and trust me, efforts were made — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce future passions, however, it's crucial to adhere to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that drives our passion.”

The developer noted that the project started with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. We aspire this approach we can continue in coming projects.”