Despite Runaway Success, Expedition 33 Developers Aim to Maintain Studio Small

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive GOTY contender, but also an enormous sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as a surprise for the team. “I was strongly believing that we would have an enjoyable experience garnering some average market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out the game's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the team versus our early predictions and the actual outcome turned out to be. Once it was published the entire team was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

This triumph prompted Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for players featuring fresh areas, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, as announced is coming in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for our work and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the human scale that made this possible and do maybe large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The size of Sandfall generated a storm of discussion following launch. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, viewed Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team for animation work, as an instance.

“We will hire slightly more certainly should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” the producer commented. “But I would see more of a workshop of a few exceptionally gifted creators that can make collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as developers “focuses on preserving the key advantages that made this achievement possible originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the developers understand what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” a developer said. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that the project originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire this approach will be repeated with upcoming games.”