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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY candidate, but also an enormous sales triumph. Developer the development team along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded 5 million units in sales, this is in spite of it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success was a shock for the team. I was convinced that we'd create a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer stated.

A technical director pointed out this title's review aggregate, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the studio relative to what we anticipated and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception prompted Sandfall developing a free update for the game featuring fresh areas, foes, along with challenging bosses, which they said is coming in the next few months.

That said, as the title expands, don’t expect the studio to grow. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director who has a great vision for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they added.

The size of Sandfall sparked plenty of debate when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at the development group as a perfect example for creative teams. Despite being truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits shows that dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit a little more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak down the line,” they said. “But I would see more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals capable of producing collective masterpieces.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as developers “is more to maintain the strengths that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

Despite being premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer explained. “The timing isn't right to announce what will interest us, but it's important also to adhere to our studio's essence through compelling worlds plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer added how this game originated from the visionary pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”