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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY contender, but also an enormous sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game topped 5 million units in sales, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as a shock to the developers. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title achieving reasonable commercial success,” a key executive stated.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked the game's critical score, now standing at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus what we anticipated and the final result of the field was. When the score released the entire team were cheering loudly. The energy was electric.”

That success resulted in work on new free content for players with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, reportedly is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, while the game is growing, don’t expect the team will expand. Our team includes an excellent group guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for our work plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive added.

Their team size generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, looked at this studio as the model for a studio. While Sandfall was and is truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits reveals numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit slightly more for sure should there be an increase in development down the line,” the executive said. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of highly skilled individuals that can make artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as developers “focuses on preserving the successful elements that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

Although it's premature for the studio to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” the lead programmer remarked. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to stay true to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

They mentioned that the project originated from the visionary developing his passion title. And hopefully this approach we will be able to do with upcoming games.”