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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s in spite of it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a shock for the team. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title achieving some average sales results,” the COO and producer commented.

The CTO and lead programmer noted the game's critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the studio relative to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. When the score released all staff members were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph prompted the studio creating a free update for the game including novel settings, foes, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out sometime soon.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the studio to grow. Our team includes a great team under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the human scale that made this possible then develop large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The size of Sandfall generated plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean versus large developers, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We plan to recruit slightly more definitely should there be next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer commented. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — they are certain their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of this project,” the lead programmer said. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to stay true to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with their director developing his passion title. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”