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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as an unexpected turn to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game achieving reasonable sales results,” a key executive stated.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, now standing at 93, was the most surprising moment for everyone relative to what we anticipated and the final result turned out to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in work on a complimentary expansion for players featuring fresh areas, enemies, and boss fights, as announced is coming in the next few months.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. “We have an excellent group guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for the project and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the producer said.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, looked at this studio as the model for a studio. Despite being truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at the game's credits shows that numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We will hire slightly more certainly should there be an increase in development down the line,” the producer stated. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio comprising a handful highly skilled individuals that can make artistic collaborations.” He noted that their core belief as a company “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

While it may be premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” they explained. “It's still premature to specify what will interest us, but it's important also to adhere to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They mentioned that the project originated from their director developing his passion title. We aspire this approach we will be able to do with upcoming games.”