🔗 Share this article

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year candidate, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game exceeded 5 million units in sales, this is in spite of its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success was an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate market performance,” the COO and producer commented.

A technical director pointed out the game's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, was the most surprising moment to the team versus “our initial expectations and the actual outcome proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

That success resulted in the studio creating a free update for the title with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, which they said will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have an excellent group with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The studio's scale sparked a storm of discussion following launch. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, viewed Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean versus large developers, checking the title's staff list indicates numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more certainly when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” the producer commented. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a studio “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — rest assured, efforts were made — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of what we built,” they explained. “It's still premature to specify our next interests, but it's important also to adhere to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They added that the project started with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire this approach will be repeated with upcoming games.”