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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive financial hit. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that the game surpassed 5 million units sold, this is even with its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as quite an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create an enjoyable experience achieving moderate market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

Another leading developer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, was the most surprising moment to the studio compared to our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in the studio creating new free content for the title including novel settings, foes, plus epic encounters, which they said will release sometime soon.

That said, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. We've built an excellent group under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that made this possible and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive added.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, viewed this studio as the model for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the game's credits reveals dozens of people worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely should there be an increase in development in upcoming years,” the producer stated. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio of a few highly skilled individuals that can make a work of art together.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as developers “is more to maintain the key advantages that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Although it's premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” they explained. “It's still premature to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our creative core through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

The developer mentioned that the project began with the visionary developing his passion title. And hopefully this approach we can continue in coming projects.”