Despite Massive Success, Expedition 33 Developers Intend to Maintain Team Small

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year contender, but also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s even with it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a surprise to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a solid title garnering moderate sales results,” a senior team member stated.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to what we anticipated and the final result proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success resulted in work on a complimentary expansion for players including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that led to our success then develop large projects one by one,” they noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is truly compact next to major studios, checking Expedition 33’s credits indicates numerous contributors were involved; the French studio partnered with overseas animators for animation work, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the producer commented. “But I would see essentially a craft studio comprising a handful exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that their core belief as a company “focuses on preserving the successful elements that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, efforts were made — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” the lead programmer said. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, but it's important also to remain faithful to our creative core featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer noted how this game originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped this approach we will be able to do in coming projects.”