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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, but also a huge commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite a surprise for the team. I was convinced that we would have a good game garnering some average commercial success,” a key executive commented.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as the greatest surprise” for everyone versus our early predictions and what the reality of the field was. Once it was published the entire team celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing new free content for players featuring fresh areas, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly will release in the next few months.

That said, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that worked for this game then develop one big game after another,” the executive noted.

The size of Sandfall sparked significant conversation following launch. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at the development group as the model for game development. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, one glance at the game's credits shows that many individuals were involved; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the executive commented. “But I would see more of a workshop comprising a handful really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success originally.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” they remarked. “The timing isn't right to announce our next interests, but it's important also to adhere to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

They noted how this game originated from the visionary developing his passion title. And hopefully this approach we will be able to do with upcoming games.”