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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed 5 million units sold, this is in spite of its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as quite a surprise to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title garnering reasonable sales results,” the COO and producer stated.

A technical director remarked this title's critical score, rated 93 by critics, was “maybe the biggest shock to the studio versus “our initial expectations and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception prompted work on a complimentary expansion for the game including novel settings, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said is coming sometime soon.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, don’t expect the studio to grow. Our team includes a great team guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that made this possible and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the executive said.

The size of Sandfall sparked significant conversation following launch. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, considered the development group as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team for animation work, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly when facing next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer said. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people that create collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as developers “focuses on preserving the key advantages that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I tried to get them to — they are certain what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” a developer remarked. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that philosophy we will be able to do with upcoming games.”