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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year contender, but also a massive sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title exceeded five million copies sold, this is even with it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as quite an unexpected turn for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game that would meet some average commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

A technical director noted this title's critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the studio relative to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Once it was published all staff members was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception resulted in Sandfall developing new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, as announced would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. “We have an excellent group with a strong creative director who has a great vision for the project plus upcoming innovations. We'd like to keep the human scale that led to our success and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the producer said.

Their team size generated a storm of discussion following launch. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, considered this studio as the model for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits reveals numerous contributors participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely should there be an increase in development down the line,” they said. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals that create artistic collaborations.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Despite being premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans what’s next — believe me, efforts were made — they are certain their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” the lead programmer said. “The timing isn't right to specify our next interests, yet we must to remain faithful to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”