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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY candidate, but also a massive commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner announced that this title exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s in spite of it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as an unexpected turn to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game garnering some average sales results,” the COO and producer commented.

Another leading developer remarked the game's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” for everyone compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to the studio creating new free content for the title including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced is coming sometime soon.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have an excellent group under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that led to our success and do maybe large projects one by one,” they added.

The studio's scale generated a storm of discussion following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, considered this studio as the model for creative teams. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, a quick look at the game's credits reveals many individuals worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” the producer stated. “Yet I picture more of a workshop of a few highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a studio “aims to keep the key advantages that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, efforts were made — the team does know what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of what we built,” they remarked. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell future passions, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The developer added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”