In spite of Massive Achievement, Expedition 33 Developers Intend to Keep Studio Compact

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY contender, but also an enormous financial hit. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title topped five million copies in sales, and that’s despite its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite an unexpected turn for the team. I was convinced that we'd create a solid title achieving reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer commented.

A technical director pointed out that Clair Obscur’s critical score, rated 93 by critics, came as the greatest surprise” to the team compared to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph resulted in the studio creating new free content for players including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, reportedly would be out sometime soon.

That said, as the title expands, don’t expect the studio to grow. “We have an excellent group with a strong creative director with a clear direction for this game and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that led to our success and do maybe major titles sequentially,” they noted.

The size of Sandfall drummed up significant conversation following launch. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, viewed this studio as a perfect example for a studio. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean next to major studios, one glance at the title's staff list indicates dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly when facing a future production surge in upcoming years,” the executive said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier comprising a handful really talented people capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a company “is more to maintain the key advantages that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details about future projects — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” a developer explained. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to adhere to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

They mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”