🔗 Share this article

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY contender, it’s also an enormous commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game exceeded 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title achieving moderate sales results,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock to the studio compared to our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in work on a free update for the game featuring fresh areas, foes, plus epic encounters, as announced will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. “We have an excellent group with a strong creative director who has a great vision for the project and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that worked for this game then develop major titles sequentially,” the producer noted.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation following launch. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, considered Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for creative teams. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits shows that many individuals worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the producer stated. “But I would see essentially a craft studio with a small number of highly skilled individuals that create collective masterpieces.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as developers “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” they remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce future passions, yet we must to adhere to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire this approach we will be able to do with upcoming games.”