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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY candidate, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance was a shock to Sandfall. I was convinced that we would have a good game garnering reasonable market performance,” a key executive commented.

A technical director pointed out the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment for everyone compared to our early predictions and the final result turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in work on a free update for the game including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the studio to grow. We've built a talented crew under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for our work and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the human scale that led to our success and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the producer added.

The studio's scale generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is truly compact versus large developers, checking the game's credits shows that many individuals worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit a little more for sure if we have a future production surge in upcoming years,” the executive commented. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as developers “is more to maintain the key advantages that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer explained. “It's still premature to specify our next interests, but it's important also to remain faithful to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The lead programmer added how this game began with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”