In spite of Massive Success, Clair Obscur Creators Plan to Maintain Studio Lean

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, but also a huge commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title topped 5 million units in sales, this is even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game achieving some average commercial success,” the COO and producer commented.

Another leading developer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to what we anticipated and what the reality turned out to be. When the score released all staff members were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph has led to work on new free content for the game with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, which they said will release in the next few months.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the team will expand. We've built a great team under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for our work and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the executive said.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“We will hire a little more for sure should there be next an upcoming production peak down the line,” the producer said. “Yet I picture more of a workshop of a few highly skilled individuals that create artistic collaborations.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to say specifically what’s next — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of what we built,” they said. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, but it's important also to stay true to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer mentioned that the project started with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”