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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a massive commercial success. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game topped five million copies sold, and that’s in spite of its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as a shock for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game garnering some average sales results,” a senior team member stated.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published the entire team was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

This triumph has led to the studio creating new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, reportedly will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. “We have an excellent group guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that made this possible then develop large projects one by one,” the executive added.

The studio's scale generated plenty of debate upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, considered the development group as the model for a studio. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list shows that numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, as an instance.

“We will hire a bit more definitely should there be an increase in development down the line,” the executive commented. “Yet I picture more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals that can make artistic collaborations.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as developers “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success originally.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, efforts were made — they are certain their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” the lead programmer explained. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, however, it's crucial to stay true to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy will be repeated in coming projects.”