Despite Runaway Success, Clair Obscur Developers Aim to Keep Team Small

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY candidate, it’s also a huge commercial success. Developer the development team along with publisher their publishing partner announced that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s even with its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite a shock to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title achieving some average market performance,” a key executive stated.

Another leading developer remarked this title's critical score, which currently sits at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock to the studio compared to our early predictions and what the reality turned out to be. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the title featuring fresh areas, adversaries, and boss fights, which they said would be out sometime soon.

However, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the team will expand. We've built an excellent group with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive noted.

The studio's scale sparked a storm of discussion upon the title's release. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at this studio as a perfect example for a studio. Although the team is and was indeed a small team next to major studios, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a little more certainly should there be next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the executive said. “But I would see essentially a craft studio comprising a handful highly skilled individuals that create artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that their core belief as developers “aims to keep the successful elements that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans about future projects — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — they are certain what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” they said. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell future passions, yet we must to stay true to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

They added that the project started with their director developing his passion title. It is hoped that philosophy we can continue as well for future productions.”