In spite of Runaway Achievement, Expedition 33 Creators Plan to Keep Studio Lean

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive financial hit. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed five million copies sold, and that’s in spite of it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was an unexpected turn for the team. I was convinced that we would have a good game garnering some average sales results,” a senior team member explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, was the most surprising moment to the studio compared to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the game including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, which they said is coming sometime soon.

However, while the game is growing, don’t expect the team will expand. Our team includes a talented crew guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that led to our success then develop major titles sequentially,” the producer noted.

Their team size sparked a storm of discussion when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for creative teams. Although the team is and was truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure if we have a future production surge down the line,” they commented. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators that can make artistic collaborations.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a studio “is more to maintain the successful elements that enabled this success in the first place.”

While it may be premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer said. “It's still premature to announce our next interests, yet we must to remain faithful to our studio's essence through compelling worlds plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer added that the project began with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”