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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY contender, but also an enormous financial hit. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game achieving some average market performance,” the COO and producer commented.

A technical director remarked the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the team compared to our early predictions and the final result of the field was. When the score released all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success has led to work on a free update for players with a new environment, enemies, along with challenging bosses, as announced would be out in the next few months.

That said, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. We've built a talented crew guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for our work plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that led to our success and perhaps create one big game after another,” they added.

The size of Sandfall drummed up a storm of discussion upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits shows that many individuals worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure when facing an increase in development in upcoming years,” the executive commented. “Yet I picture more of a workshop comprising a handful exceptionally gifted creators that can make a work of art together.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of this project,” they explained. “It's a bit too early to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to adhere to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer noted that the project started with their director developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something we will be able to do as well for future productions.”