In spite of Massive Success, Expedition 33 Developers Aim to Maintain Team Lean

The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title exceeded 5 million units sold, this is in spite of its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success was a shock for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game garnering some average sales results,” a key executive commented.

A technical director noted the game's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as “maybe the biggest shock for everyone compared to our early predictions and the actual outcome proved to be. Because when it dropped the entire team were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for players with a new environment, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes an excellent group with a strong creative director with a clear direction for this game and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game and do maybe one big game after another,” the executive added.

The studio's scale sparked plenty of debate following launch. Some developers, such as the famed director, considered this studio as the model for game development. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean versus large developers, one glance at the game's credits shows that dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly if we have a future production surge down the line,” the executive said. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio comprising a handful really talented people that can make a work of art together.” He noted that their core belief as developers “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being premature for the studio to reveal exact details about future projects — believe me, I attempted to learn more — they are certain their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” they explained. “The timing isn't right to specify what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the visionary developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy we can continue in coming projects.”