🔗 Share this article

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game topped five million copies in sales, and that’s even with its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as a shock for the team. I firmly believed that we would have an enjoyable experience garnering some average commercial success,” a senior team member stated.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus “our initial expectations and the actual outcome proved to be. When the score released the entire team was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

That success has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for players featuring fresh areas, foes, along with challenging bosses, which they said will release sometime soon.

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 our work plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the human scale that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” the producer noted.

The studio's scale sparked significant conversation following launch. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at the development group as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals many individuals worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“We will hire a little more definitely when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” they stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as a company “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being not the right time to say specifically about future projects — believe me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer said. “It's still premature to announce what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to our studio's essence through compelling worlds plus innovative play that excites us.”

They mentioned that the project began with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”