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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY candidate, but also a huge commercial success. Developer the development team along with publisher their publishing partner announced that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game garnering reasonable sales results,” a senior team member explained.

A technical director remarked this title's Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the studio relative to what we anticipated and what the reality proved to be. When the score released everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to work on a free update for the title with a new environment, enemies, along with challenging bosses, reportedly will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, while the game is growing, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. We've built a talented crew with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that led to our success then develop one big game after another,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall generated significant conversation when the game came out. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was truly compact versus large developers, checking the title's staff list indicates numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“We will hire a bit more for sure when facing an increase in development in upcoming years,” they commented. “Yet I picture more of a workshop of a few really talented people that create collective masterpieces.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “aims to keep the successful elements that enabled this success from the start.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — believe me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of this project,” a developer remarked. “The timing isn't right to announce future passions, but it's important also to adhere to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

They mentioned how this game started with their director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that's something we can continue in coming projects.”