🔗 Share this article

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY candidate, but also a huge sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is even with its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” a key executive commented.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s critical score, rated 93 by critics, was “maybe the biggest shock to the studio versus what we anticipated and the final result turned out to be. Once it was published the entire team celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph prompted Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the title featuring fresh areas, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, reportedly will release in the next few months.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have an excellent group with a strong creative director who has a great vision for the project and future concepts. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they added.

The studio's scale generated plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, considered the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at the game's credits reveals many individuals participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a little more certainly should there be next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” they commented. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as developers “aims to keep the successful elements that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

While it may be premature for the studio to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of what we built,” a developer remarked. “It's still premature to specify future passions, yet we must to stay true to our creative core featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

They added how this game originated from their director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something will be repeated as well for future productions.”