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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY candidate, it’s also a huge financial hit. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game surpassed 5 million units in sales, this is in spite of it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title achieving moderate sales results,” the COO and producer commented.

A technical director pointed out that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the studio compared to our early predictions and the final result turned out to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph prompted work on a complimentary expansion for players with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, as announced would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the studio to grow. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director with a clear direction for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that worked for this game then develop one big game after another,” the executive said.

Their team size generated significant conversation when the game came out. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list shows that dozens of people participated; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure should there be a future production surge in the coming years,” the executive said. “But I would see essentially a craft studio of a few highly skilled individuals that can make collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as developers “is more to maintain the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically about future projects — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the developers understand what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” they explained. “It's still premature to specify our next interests, yet we must to remain faithful to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

The lead programmer added how this game began with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully this approach we will be able to do as well for future productions.”