Despite Overwhelming Success, Clair Obscur Creators Intend to Maintain Team Compact

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a massive commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title topped 5 million units sold, this is even with it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a surprise to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have an enjoyable experience achieving reasonable sales results,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked this title's critical score, which currently sits at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock for everyone compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome of the field was. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success resulted in the studio creating a free update for players with a new environment, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, reportedly will release in the next few months.

However, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. We've built a talented crew under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that led to our success then develop major titles sequentially,” the executive added.

Their team size generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits indicates numerous contributors participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” the producer stated. “But I would see rather a creative atelier with a small number of highly skilled individuals that create artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as developers “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, yet we must to remain faithful to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy will be repeated in coming projects.”