Forget playing Doom on a calculator. Now you can play it with a clump of brain cells--no brainstem necessary.

During this year’s Game Developers Conference, Sandfall Interactive lifted the curtain on how it was able to create Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with a small team of programmers. The studio’s secret?

Big Walk is emblematic of how Panic operates its gaming business. Sasser says there are no “hard-and-fast rules” about how it approaches the titles it works on. “It’s really just like: What will this ...