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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY candidate, it’s also a huge commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, this is even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as a shock for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game garnering reasonable market performance,” a key executive explained.

A technical director noted the game's critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment for everyone relative to our early predictions and the final result of the field was. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph resulted in the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the title including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, which they said would be out in the next few months.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the studio to grow. We've built a great team under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that made this possible and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the executive said.

Their team size generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, viewed the development group as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates numerous contributors participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly when facing next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the producer stated. “But I would see rather a creative atelier comprising a handful really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” It was stated that their core belief as developers “aims to keep the key advantages that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to disclose concrete plans what’s next — believe me, efforts were made — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, however, it's crucial to adhere to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The developer noted how this game started with the visionary pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped that philosophy will be repeated in coming projects.”