In spite of Massive Achievement, Expedition 33 Developers Intend to Keep Team Small

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s even with it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite a shock for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create an enjoyable experience that would meet reasonable market performance,” a senior team member explained.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the studio compared to “our initial expectations and what the reality turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

That success prompted Sandfall developing new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. We've built a great team guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that worked for this game and perhaps create large projects one by one,” the producer said.

The size of Sandfall sparked significant conversation upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, looked at this studio as the model for creative teams. Despite being relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals many individuals worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We plan to recruit a bit more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer commented. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of really talented people capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as developers “is more to maintain the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the team does know their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of this project,” the lead programmer explained. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer noted that the project started with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully this approach we can continue with upcoming games.”