Despite Runaway Achievement, Expedition 33 Creators Aim to Maintain Studio Lean

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY candidate, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that the game surpassed five million copies sold, this is in spite of its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game that would meet moderate sales results,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception resulted in work on a free update for players including novel settings, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes an excellent group guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that made this possible then develop large projects one by one,” they noted.

Their team size generated plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered Sandfall’s team as the model for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean versus large developers, one glance at the title's staff list indicates dozens of people were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“We will hire slightly more definitely should there be a future production surge down the line,” the producer commented. “Yet I picture more of a workshop with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a company “aims to keep the successful elements that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of our creations,” they said. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer noted how this game originated from the visionary developing his passion title. We aspire that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”