Despite Massive Achievement, Clair Obscur Creators Plan to Maintain Studio Compact
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY contender, it’s also a huge commercial success. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that this title surpassed five million copies sold, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.
This achievement was a shock to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create a solid title garnering moderate market performance,” a senior team member commented.
The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment for everyone versus what we anticipated and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”
The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, reportedly would be out sometime soon.
However, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. Our team includes an excellent group under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that made this possible and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the producer added.
The size of Sandfall generated significant conversation following launch. Some developers, such as the famed director, considered Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team next to major studios, one glance at the game's credits reveals dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, as an instance.
“We plan to recruit slightly more definitely should there be a future production surge in upcoming years,” the producer said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators that can make a work of art together.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a company “is more to maintain the successful elements that made this achievement possible in the first place.”
Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details what’s next — believe me, efforts were made — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” they remarked. “It's a bit too early to specify what will interest us, but it's important also to remain faithful to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds plus innovative play that drives our passion.”
They mentioned that the project began with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy we can continue in coming projects.”