🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also a massive commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game exceeded 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a shock for the team. I firmly believed that we would have a solid title garnering reasonable commercial success,” a senior team member commented.

Another leading developer noted this title's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the team compared to what we anticipated and the final result turned out to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph has led to work on new free content for the title with a new environment, enemies, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release in the next few months.

That said, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built an excellent group under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for the project and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” the producer said.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at the development group as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being relatively lean versus large developers, a quick look at the game's credits reveals dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“We will hire slightly more definitely if we have a future production surge in the coming years,” they said. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a company “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

While it may be 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. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” a developer remarked. “It's still premature to specify what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer added that the project began with the visionary developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”