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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY candidate, but also an enormous sales triumph. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is even with it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as a surprise for the team. “I was strongly believing that we would have a good game that would meet some average market performance,” a senior team member commented.

A technical director remarked this title's critical score, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team relative to our early predictions and what the reality turned out to be. When the score released everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph prompted Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the title including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the studio to grow. “We have a talented crew guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for the project plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive added.

Their team size generated plenty of debate upon the title's release. Some developers, such as the famed director, viewed the development group as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits indicates dozens of people were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“We will hire a bit more certainly if we have a future production surge in the coming years,” they commented. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people that can make artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being not the right time to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of this project,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, but it's important also to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The developer mentioned how this game originated from their director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated with upcoming games.”