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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s in spite of its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game achieving reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the team compared to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph has led to the studio creating new free content for the title with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, while the game is growing, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary 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 one big game after another,” they noted.

The studio's scale sparked significant conversation following launch. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at the development group as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, checking the title's staff list indicates many individuals participated; the French studio partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure when facing an increase in development in upcoming years,” the executive stated. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio of a few highly skilled individuals that can make artistic collaborations.” He noted that their core belief as a company “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

While it may be premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans what’s next — believe me, I attempted to learn more — they are certain what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer said. “It's still premature to announce future passions, however, it's crucial to adhere to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from their director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire this approach will be repeated with upcoming games.”