🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY candidate, it’s also a huge financial hit. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that the game topped 5 million units in sales, this is in spite of its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a surprise to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate market performance,” a key executive explained.

A technical director noted the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the team relative to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph resulted in work on new free content for players with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release sometime soon.

However, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the studio to grow. “We have an excellent group guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for the project plus upcoming innovations. We'd like to keep the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create one big game after another,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall generated plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as a perfect example for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is truly compact next to major studios, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals numerous contributors participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a little more definitely should there be next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the producer said. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio of a few exceptionally gifted creators that create artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a company “focuses on preserving the successful elements that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to say specifically what’s next — believe me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer explained. “The timing isn't right to announce what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to our creative core through compelling worlds plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer added how this game began with the creative director developing his passion title. We aspire this approach we can continue in coming projects.”