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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year contender, but also a massive commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s in spite of it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game that would meet some average market performance,” a senior team member explained.

Another leading developer noted the game's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the studio relative to what we anticipated and the final result of the field was. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

That success prompted Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the game including novel settings, foes, plus epic encounters, which they said will release sometime soon.

However, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the studio to grow. Our team includes an excellent group under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for the project plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” the executive added.

The studio's scale drummed up a storm of discussion following launch. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean next to major studios, checking the title's staff list shows that numerous contributors participated; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We will hire slightly more definitely if we have an increase in development in upcoming years,” they said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio of a few highly skilled individuals that can make a work of art together.” He noted that their core belief as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

Despite being premature for the studio to reveal exact details what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to adhere to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from their director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire this approach we can continue in coming projects.”