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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY contender, it’s also an enormous sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s in spite of it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite a shock for the team. I firmly believed that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate market performance,” a senior team member stated.

A technical director pointed out this title's review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome turned out to be. When the score released everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception resulted in work on a complimentary expansion for the title featuring fresh areas, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly is coming in the next few months.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for this game plus upcoming innovations. We'd like to keep the human scale that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” the executive noted.

The size of Sandfall sparked a storm of discussion upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at the game's credits shows that numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” they stated. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier comprising a handful highly skilled individuals capable of producing a work of art together.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as developers “is more to maintain the successful elements that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, efforts were made — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer remarked. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell future passions, however, it's crucial to adhere to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer mentioned that the project originated from the visionary pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”