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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY candidate, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title surpassed five million copies sold, this is in spite of its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement was a surprise to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create a good game that would meet moderate sales results,” a senior team member commented.

A technical director remarked the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the team versus our early predictions and what the reality turned out to be. When the score released everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception resulted in Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the title including novel settings, enemies, and boss fights, as announced is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. Our team includes an excellent group guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for the project and future concepts. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that led to our success then develop one big game after another,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall generated a storm of discussion upon the title's release. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, considered the development group as the model for game development. While Sandfall was and is truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at the game's credits reveals many individuals participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more for sure should there be an increase in development down the line,” the producer said. “Yet I picture more of a workshop comprising a handful exceptionally gifted creators that can make collective masterpieces.” He noted that their core belief as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, however, it's crucial to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

They added that the project originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”