In spite of Overwhelming Achievement, Expedition 33 Creators Plan to Maintain Team Lean

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title surpassed five million copies sold, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite an unexpected turn to the developers. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

A technical director noted the game's critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the team relative to “our initial expectations and the final result of the field was. Once it was published all staff members were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph has led to the studio creating a complimentary expansion for players including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, as announced will release sometime soon.

However, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. Our team includes a talented crew under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for this game and future concepts. We'd like to keep the human scale that led to our success and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive said.

The size of Sandfall drummed up a storm of discussion when the game came out. Some developers, such as the famed director, viewed the development group as the model for game development. While Sandfall was and is truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates dozens of people were involved; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire a little more definitely should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” the producer commented. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier comprising a handful really talented people that can make artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as developers “is more to maintain the successful elements that enabled this success from the start.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — rest assured, efforts were made — they are certain what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer remarked. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer noted how this game began with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”