🔗 Share this article

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous financial hit. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed five million copies sold, this is even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a solid title that would meet reasonable sales results,” a key executive stated.

Another leading developer noted the game's Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” for everyone relative to “our initial expectations and what the reality of the field was. When the score released everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for players featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said is coming sometime soon.

However, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. We've built an excellent group under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for our work plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible then develop large projects one by one,” the executive added.

The studio's scale generated significant conversation upon the title's release. Some developers, such as the famed director, considered this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean versus large developers, one glance at the game's credits shows that many individuals worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We will hire a little more definitely should there be a future production surge in the coming years,” the executive said. “Yet I picture more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals capable of producing a work of art together.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a company “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans what’s next — rest assured, efforts were made — they are certain their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of what we built,” a developer said. “It's still premature to be able to tell what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer added that the project began with the visionary developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy we can continue in coming projects.”