🔗 Share this article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game surpassed 5 million units in sales, this is even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have a good game garnering some average market performance,” a senior team member stated.

Another leading developer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the team relative to what we anticipated and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success prompted work on a free update for players including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

However, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. “We have a great team under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for our work and future concepts. We intend to preserve the human scale that led to our success and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the producer noted.

The size of Sandfall generated a storm of discussion upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for game development. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean next to major studios, checking the game's credits indicates numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more definitely when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” the producer commented. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing collective masterpieces.” It was stated that their core belief as a studio “aims to keep the successful elements that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to disclose concrete plans about future projects — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of this project,” they remarked. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer added that the project began with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”