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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that the game surpassed 5 million units sold, this is even with its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to the developers. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” a key executive commented.

A technical director remarked this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team relative to “our initial expectations and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph has led to work on new free content for players with a new environment, adversaries, and boss fights, as announced will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. We've built a great team under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that made this possible and do maybe one big game after another,” they added.

Their team size generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, looked at the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals many individuals worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more for sure when facing next an upcoming production peak down the line,” they stated. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing a work of art together.” It was stated that their core belief as a studio “aims to keep the successful elements that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — believe me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” a developer said. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, yet we must to stay true to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that drives our passion.”

The developer noted how this game began with their director developing his passion title. And hopefully this approach will be repeated with upcoming games.”