🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year candidate, but also a huge financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game surpassed 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite an unexpected turn for the team. I firmly believed that we would have a solid title garnering moderate market performance,” the COO and producer stated.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the team compared to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Once it was published the entire team were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

That success prompted work on new free content for the title with a new environment, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly will release sometime soon.

However, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. “We have an excellent group guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for this game and future concepts. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that led to our success and perhaps create one big game after another,” the executive noted.

Their team size sparked significant conversation upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, looked at Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for creative teams. Despite being relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list reveals dozens of people participated; the French studio partnered with overseas animators for animation work, as an instance.

“We will hire a bit more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer said. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that can make artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans about future projects — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the team does know what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer remarked. “It's a bit too early to specify future passions, but it's important also to remain faithful to our creative core through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer added how this game started with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we can continue as well for future productions.”