Despite Overwhelming Achievement, Expedition 33 Developers Intend to Maintain Team Compact

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive commercial success. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner announced that the game exceeded five million copies sold, this is in spite of its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game achieving some average sales results,” the COO and producer explained.

Another leading developer remarked that Clair Obscur’s critical score, rated 93 by critics, was the greatest surprise” to the studio versus “our initial expectations and what the reality turned out to be. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to the studio creating a free update for the game including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes a great team guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that worked for this game then develop major titles sequentially,” the producer added.

The studio's scale drummed up a storm of discussion when the game came out. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, looked at this studio as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits shows that dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, for example.

“We plan to recruit a bit more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they commented. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier comprising a handful highly skilled individuals that can make a work of art together.” It was stated that their core belief as a studio “aims to keep the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer said. “It's a bit too early to specify what will interest us, however, it's crucial to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The developer mentioned how this game began with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that's something we will be able to do as well for future productions.”