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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous sales triumph. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed 5 million units sold, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success was a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title garnering moderate commercial success,” a senior team member stated.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out this title's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as the most surprising moment to the team compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published all staff members was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception prompted the studio creating new free content for the game with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, as announced would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game and do maybe large projects one by one,” they added.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate when the game came out. Some developers, such as the famed director, considered the development group as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team next to major studios, checking the game's credits shows that many individuals were involved; the French studio partnered with overseas animators for animation work, for example.

“We plan to recruit a bit more certainly when facing a future production surge in upcoming years,” the producer said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create a work of art together.” He noted that their core belief as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Although it's premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” they said. “It's a bit too early to specify our next interests, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

They added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that's something we can continue as well for future productions.”