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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY candidate, it’s also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have an enjoyable experience that would meet reasonable sales results,” a key executive commented.

Another leading developer pointed out the game's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, was the greatest surprise” to the studio relative to what we anticipated and the actual outcome of the field was. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

That success prompted the studio creating new free content for the title including novel settings, adversaries, and boss fights, which they said will release in the next few months.

That said, while the game is growing, don’t expect the studio to grow. We've built a talented crew under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for our work plus upcoming innovations. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and do maybe large projects one by one,” they said.

Their team size sparked plenty of debate upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at the development group as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, one glance at the title's staff list reveals many individuals participated; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire a bit more for sure if we have next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the executive commented. “However, I envision more of a workshop of a few really talented people capable of producing artistic collaborations.” It was stated that their core belief as a company “is more to maintain the strengths that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to say specifically about future projects — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” they explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell future passions, yet we must to adhere to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

They noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director developing his passion title. It is hoped this approach we will be able to do in coming projects.”