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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY contender, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that this title topped five million copies sold, this is in spite of it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a good game achieving moderate market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the studio relative to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing a free update for players including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a great team under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they noted.

The studio's scale sparked significant conversation upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean versus large developers, one glance at the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire a little more for sure when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the producer said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of really talented people capable of producing collective masterpieces.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a company “aims to keep the successful elements that enabled this success in the first place.”

While it may be premature for the studio to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — believe me, efforts were made — they are certain their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” the lead programmer explained. “It's still premature to be able to tell what will interest us, but it's important also to adhere to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

The developer noted how this game originated from the visionary developing his passion title. It is hoped that philosophy we can continue in coming projects.”