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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year candidate, but also a massive financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game topped five million copies in sales, this is even with its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success was an unexpected turn for the team. I was convinced that we'd create a good game garnering reasonable market performance,” a senior team member commented.

Another leading developer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the studio versus what we anticipated and the final result turned out to be. When the score released the entire team was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in Sandfall developing new free content for the game with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, which they said is coming in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, don’t expect the team will expand. “We have a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for this game plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success and perhaps create one big game after another,” they said.

The studio's scale generated plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, looked at this studio as a perfect example for creative teams. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at the game's credits shows that dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” they said. “But I would see essentially a craft studio of a few exceptionally gifted creators that can make a work of art together.” They emphasized that their core belief as a studio “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans about future projects — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” a developer said. “It's a bit too early to specify what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer added that the project began with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do as well for future productions.”