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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY contender, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Developer the development team along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title surpassed five million copies in sales, this is in spite of its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was an unexpected turn to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a good game that would meet reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer stated.

Another leading developer remarked the game's review aggregate, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the studio relative to our early predictions and what the reality proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

That success has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the title including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, as the title expands, don’t expect the studio to grow. “We have an excellent group under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up a storm of discussion upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure when facing an increase in development in upcoming years,” the executive commented. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

While it may be premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans 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,” the lead programmer remarked. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, yet we must to stay true to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully this approach we will be able to do with upcoming games.”