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

This achievement came as quite a surprise to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game achieving some average market performance,” a senior team member stated.

A technical director pointed out the game's critical score, which currently sits at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock to the team relative to our early predictions and what the reality proved to be. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

This triumph has led to Sandfall developing a free update for the game including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly is coming in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. “We have a talented crew under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that led to our success then develop one big game after another,” the executive said.

The size of Sandfall sparked plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean versus large developers, a quick look at the game's credits shows that many individuals worked on it; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more for sure if we have an increase in development in the coming years,” they stated. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier comprising a handful really talented people capable of producing a work of art together.” It was stated that their core belief as a company “is more to maintain the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” they said. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, yet we must to adhere to our creative core through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that drives our passion.”

They noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully this approach we will be able to do in coming projects.”