Hideo Kojima has expressed admiration for the smaller team size of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive, highlighting that the French studio has just 33 team members and a dog.

During a group Q&A session with Dexerto, Kojima mentioned that his own Kojima Productions team had expanded to over 200 developers in recent years. Despite this growth, he emphasized his preference for working in smaller teams and lauded Sandfall Interactive for their success with Expedition 33.

According to Kojima, working with a team of around 33 members, like Sandfall Interactive, is his ideal approach to creating something. He mentioned that while the scope of creation has increased significantly, there is a balance between efficiency and grandeur when working with a smaller team.

There has been some discussion regarding the actual size of Clair Obscur's development team. Although the game credits list approximately 30-40 staff at Sandfall, additional outsourced animation, QA, and performance capture personnel bring the total number of individuals involved in the project to hundreds.

While Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has received critical acclaim, achieving a Metacritic score of 93 on PS5, 91 on Xbox Series X/S, and 91 on PC, some argue that attributing the success solely to a small team may not be entirely accurate.

Released on April 24, the game garnered praise from French president Emmanuel Macron for reaching 1 million sales within three days. Macron commended Sandfall Interactive for their achievement, hailing them as a prime example of French creativity and boldness.

Shortly after its release, Sandfall announced that Expedition 33 had sold 3.3 million copies in just 33 days, further solidifying its success.

Looking ahead, Kojima's upcoming game, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, is set to launch on June 26 exclusively for PlayStation 5.