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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY candidate, but also a massive sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s despite its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a solid title garnering reasonable market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out the game's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, was the greatest surprise” to the studio versus our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to work on new free content for the title including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, reportedly is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for our work and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and perhaps create one big game after another,” they noted.

The studio's scale sparked a storm of discussion upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, viewed Sandfall’s team as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team next to major studios, one glance at the game's credits indicates dozens of people were involved; the French studio partnered with overseas animators handling movement and effects, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a little more for sure when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” the producer stated. “But I would see essentially a craft studio of a few highly skilled individuals that create collective masterpieces.” He noted that their core belief as a company “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — believe me, I attempted to learn more — they are certain their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer explained. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, yet we must to remain faithful to our creative core through compelling worlds plus innovative play that excites us.”

They mentioned how this game originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that's something will be repeated with upcoming games.”