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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year candidate, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title surpassed 5 million units sold, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success was a shock to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create an enjoyable experience achieving moderate sales results,” a senior team member commented.

Another leading developer pointed out this title's critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” for everyone versus what we anticipated and the actual outcome turned out to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception resulted in work on new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced would be out in the next few months.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. We've built a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that worked for this game and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the executive noted.

The studio's scale generated plenty of debate upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the model for game development. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals many individuals participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a little more for sure when facing next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer stated. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as a company “aims to keep the key advantages that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — rest assured, efforts were made — the developers understand their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” they remarked. “The timing isn't right to announce our next interests, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the creative director developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated as well for future productions.”