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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY contender, but also a huge financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s in spite of it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as a surprise to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title achieving reasonable market performance,” a senior team member stated.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the studio compared to our early predictions and what the reality proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph resulted in the studio creating a free update for the game including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced would be out sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. “We have a great team under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that led to our success then develop major titles sequentially,” the producer added.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Despite being truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits shows that numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team for animation work, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a little more definitely should there be an increase in development down the line,” the executive commented. “But I would see more of a workshop comprising a handful highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be not the right time to disclose concrete plans what’s next — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of this project,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's still premature to be able to tell what will interest us, however, it's crucial to adhere to our creative core through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The developer mentioned that the project began with the visionary developing his passion title. And hopefully that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”