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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY candidate, but also a massive financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success was an unexpected turn for the team. I firmly believed that we would have an enjoyable experience achieving moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

Another leading developer pointed out the game's critical score, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock for everyone compared to our early predictions and what the reality of the field was. When the score released the entire team was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

This triumph prompted Sandfall developing new free content for players with a new environment, adversaries, and boss fights, which they said is coming in the next few months.

However, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built a great team under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” they added.

The size of Sandfall drummed up plenty of debate upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, considered this studio as the model for creative teams. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list shows that dozens of people participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the producer said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a studio “aims to keep the key advantages that made this achievement possible originally.”

While it may be not the right time to say specifically about future projects — believe me, efforts were made — they are certain their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer explained. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to stay true to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy we can continue as well for future productions.”