In spite of Overwhelming Achievement, Expedition 33 Developers Intend to Keep Team Small

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title topped 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a surprise for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game garnering reasonable sales results,” a key executive commented.

Another leading developer noted the game's Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” for everyone versus “our initial expectations and the actual outcome turned out to be. When the score released everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception prompted work on a free update for the title with a new environment, enemies, along with challenging bosses, reportedly is coming sometime soon.

That said, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. We've built a great team guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create one big game after another,” they noted.

Their team size sparked a storm of discussion following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for game development. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team next to major studios, checking the game's credits indicates numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team for animation work, as an instance.

“We will hire a little more definitely should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” they stated. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a company “focuses on preserving the successful elements that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, efforts were made — the developers understand what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of our creations,” the lead programmer explained. “The timing isn't right to announce future passions, but it's important also to adhere to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do as well for future productions.”