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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY candidate, but also a massive commercial success. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game topped 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance was a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate market performance,” a senior team member commented.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. When the score released everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception prompted the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the title featuring fresh areas, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced would be out sometime soon.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, don’t expect the team will expand. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that worked for this game and perhaps create one big game after another,” the producer said.

The size of Sandfall sparked significant conversation upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, considered the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Despite being indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals dozens of people were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely should there be 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 capable of producing a work of art together.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as developers “aims to keep the key advantages that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, efforts were made — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of our creations,” the lead programmer remarked. “The timing isn't right to announce what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

They mentioned how this game began with their director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”