🔗 Share this article

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create an enjoyable experience garnering reasonable commercial success,” a key executive explained.

A technical director remarked the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” for everyone compared to our early predictions and what the reality turned out to be. Once it was published the entire team were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success prompted Sandfall developing new free content for the game including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, which they said would be out sometime soon.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The size of Sandfall sparked significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is truly compact next to major studios, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, for example.

“We plan to recruit slightly more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they said. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio comprising a handful really talented people that can make artistic collaborations.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as developers “is more to maintain the successful elements that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to say specifically about future projects — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their essential identity. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's still premature to specify what will interest us, but it's important also to adhere to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer noted how this game originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”