ABOUT GamesBeat

A group for GamesBeat writer, readers, and more

For people who love games.

GamesBeat[www.gamesbeat.com]

VIEW ALL

POPULAR DISCUSSIONS

VIEW ALL (1500)

RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Griffin Gaming Partners launches $100M project financing fund for indie games | exclusive interview

6 May - Syndicated News | 0 Comments

{LINK REMOVED}Griffin Gaming Partners, the game-focused venture capital fund with $1.5 billion under management, announced today a $100 million indie games fund for project financing.

The Special Opportunities Fund could unlock hundreds of thousands to low millions of dollars per deal for indie game developers, said Nick Tuosto, managing director at Griffin in an interview with GamesBeat.

The initiative targets promising indie games. And the Special Opportunities Fund aims to provide a new model for venture capital investment in gaming, focusing on project-based financing with simple terms, in which funding is provided in exchange for a share of a game’s revenue.

This contrasts with commonly used equity-based investments and seeks to offer a better way of getting capital into the hands of indie studios, many of which are not equipped for or interested in traditional equity-based investment.

In recent years, the success of indie developers in achieving breakout hits with comparatively modest budgets has made clear both the need for and the opportunity in fair funding solutions for small studios. By combining industry-leading expertise and $100 million in funding, the Special Opportunities Fund aims to make substantial changes in the
opportunities available to developers.

Why look for small and special?

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Menace is one of the games Griffin’s SOF has already financed. “This is pretty exciting because it’s an unusually challenging capital markets environment for funds, but this one, we just had an incredible amount of excitement from investors to participate in the fastest-growing segment of the content side of the ecosystem,” said Tuosto. “That’s how we think about where this fund plays. It’s indie and double A. Everyone has these different definitions of indie. Some of these budgets get up into the triple-i or double-A space. But we’re usually focused on relatively small teams and extraordinary vision for product.”

The focus is on demos that are easy to get excited about, and the team writes relatively small checks compared to venture investing.

“We’re funding anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars up to several million, but it’s a lot smaller average check size versus venture capital. And we provide a lot of support to the developers. So we come in and provide a lot of advice and perspective on how to maximize their potential opportunity.”

With project financing, developers know exactly what they’re getting. He said they know that the terms are friendly in terms of how Griffin structures its contracts, at least in comparison to a lot of publisher deals where capital is provided with a focus on recoup and making sure the publisher gets paid before anybody else. We focus on partnering, and in the spirit of that, we get paid when the developer gets paid.”

“We are looking to shake things up a bit with this decent amount of capital to work for lots of teams that might otherwise have otherwise not been able to make the most of the products that they have,” he said.

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Peter Levin (left) and Nick Tuosto of Griffin Gaming Partners. Source: Griffin Gaming Partners Tim Bender, CEO of Hooded Horse, also serves as managing director of the fund, which
has already invested in fifteen titles, including nine announced projects:
● Menace is a sci-fi turn-based tactical RPG created by Overhype Studios (Battle
Brothers), which has sold over 250,000 copies in less than three months (Steam Page |
Trailer)
● Begone Beast is a top-down co-op horror game for up to four players, featuring a blend of exploration, combat, and character customization across an array of procedurally generated maps (Steam Page |Trailer)
● Expedition: Into Darkness is a dungeon crawler and extraction game in a dark fantasy
setting with co-op gameplay (Steam Page |Trailer)
● Vaunted is a sci-fi turn-based RPG featuring both singleplayer and co-op game
modes, recently announced via the Xbox Partner Preview (Steam Page |
Trailer)
● Gilded Destiny is an ambitious hex-based grand strategy title set in the Industrial Age
(Steam Page | Trailer)
● Darkwood 2 is a top-down survival horror sequel to the original best-selling
Darkwood (Steam Page | Trailer)
● Kinstrife is a high-fidelity medieval RPG set in an authentic open world with
physics-based combat (Steam Page | Trailer)
● Highland Keep is an open-world survival craft game set in medieval Scotland, featuring base building, colony management, and real-time action combat (Steam Page | Trailer)
● Hellforged: Extraction/loot-driven bullet-heaven game with a focus on finding epic
gear to fight off waves of demons (Steam Page | Trailer)

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Griffin Gaming Partners has started a $100 million indie fund. Source: Griffin Gaming Partners
The SOF is also invested in six unannounced projects:
● A sci-fi grand strategy game based on a popular book and TV franchise
● A God game with physics mechanics
● A Gladiator management simulation
● A dinosaur multiplayer RPG
● A hard sci-fi space ARPG
● A fantasy ARPG with base-building
These projects represent a mix of situations, ranging from self-published games to those
signed with a publisher, with several published by Hooded Horse.

The investments have been proceeding for a few months now in the project-financing fund, Tuosto said.

The shift to project financing?

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Vaunted got funding from Griffin’s SOF. “Indie games represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the interactive
entertainment market today,” said Tuosto. “We know developers want a flexible, transparent financing solution, and we’re excited to support their ambitions through the dedicated Special Opportunities Fund. Griffin has been honing its strategy since its formation, and we are proud to bring this new initiative to market with an investment team we believe is uniquely positioned to help exceptional developers realize their full potential.”

“We’re very excited for the transmedia potential of this fund,” said Griffin managing
director and cofounder Peter Levin, in a statement. “The very essence of these games and the contemplative nature of their development lead to sticky player communities and loyal
followings. Having fund advisors such as film and television producer Dylan Clark (producer of The Batman, The Penguin, Miami Vice) and brand stewards such as Russell Binder (Five Nights at Freddy’s, Angry Birds, The Walking Dead, Dead by Daylight) shows we’re serious about unlocking opportunities for these titles outside of gaming.”

“The potential of indie game development is incredible,” said Bender. “The $100 million
this fund makes available to indie studios is going to result in so many more great games
being brought to audiences that will love them.”

Griffin’s investment in the indie game ecosystem extends outside the Special Opportunities Fund as well, with equity investments into a variety of independent studios and the recent acquisition of Playdigious, the premier mobile porting and publishing studio for premium PC indie games.

Griffin has invested in a wide variety of game-related companies including Overwolf, Discord, Amplitude Studios, AppLovin and numerous other gaming projects.

The core of the market may have the opportunity

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Kinstrife got funding from Griffin’s SOF. These aren’t likely to be games at the edge of the market like VR, AR or AI. Rather, they’re games at the core of the market.

“These are great games, but with tremendous innovation, but not in terms of distribution or the form factor. These are games built for PC in ways that are totally novel. And this is another theme that we think is really interesting,” Tuosto said. “Lots of big creative chances are being taken in the indie arena, and we’re starting to see more triple-A products that follow formulaic approaches to producing content.”

“There’s hundreds of millions or tens of millions of dollars behind it, in terms of the budget, and you have a lot to lose if you take a creative swing. And it doesn’t resonate,” he said. “[The indies] are passion-driven founders that are mostly betting with their own time. They’re spending years and years, in some cases, of their own time against the vision they have for a product, and that frees them to be able to take risks.”

The larger fund is still on course

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Highland Keep got financing from Griffin’s SOF. The larger fund’s strategy isn’t changed, as its focus is to take meaningful equity in companies and making big bets on large outcomes, Tuosto said. In this case, the indie fund isn’t investing in technology or large budgets or big teams.

Tuosto said Griffin’s strategy is unchanged.

“We’re making a very long term bet on the company or studio,” he said. “We can be very patient. It’s a decade later that you see the real fruits of those labors start to manifest. I think this is really a tailored solution for indie studios. So we’re not investing in technology, we’re not investing in large budgets or big teams. This is an addressable opportunity for venture before you really need only look at the exit activity to see very few small teams end up getting acquired at any price.”

He said, “There’s been a big slowdown relative to three or four years ago, where companies like Embracer were quite active in the consolidation arena around content. There are very few acquirers today that are looking to buy studios.”

And he said, “When you think about the venture math, it doesn’t really work to invest millions of dollars in a studio and then take the risk that the company doesn’t get sold and ultimately see an exit on the other side for $20 million, $30 million, $40 million. Even $100 million is very tough. Venture math works best when a single investment has the potential to return the whole fund, or even multiples of it. And in this case, you know, there’s been counter examples, like Subnautica with Krafton. But there are very few big ticket m&a transactions.”

He most developers don’t want to sell their companies.

“That’s a big signal for us that we need to respond in a way that’s responsive to what the developer is actually looking for. And what they do want is capital. And they want a passive partner that is there to support but not control their company.”

That’s where project financing has found its place in the market, he said.

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Hellforged got funding from Griffin’s SOF. He noted that the growth of titles on Steam is almost on an exponential curve, and the proportion of indie breakout hits has actually been very high, and that’s in contrast to mobile, where now you see an incredible volume of creatives required to operate a game and market that game at scale.

“It’s really a game where very few players are able to deploy hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, on user acquisition to reach the users in crowded categories. You see very quick copycat products by very competent and capable teams supercharged with AI. It just makes the the odds that a single person or two people you know, can have it a breakthrough hit in mobile almost zero.”

All of the investments so far are in Steam games. They maybe a mobile port opoprtunity and console adjacency. But Steam has ways of showing which games are resonating.

“For us, that’s really exciting because we don’t feel like we’re taking the same type of risk of a failure,” he said. “We think that a lot of these products have more potential with capital and good advice, but we don’t think that we’re gonna have a high proportion of these games that we fund not work. And that’s that’s also very different than venture where you’re taking perhaps one in 10 games is a breakout. One breakout hit makes up for nine that aren’t.”

Griffin Gaming Partners hasn’t disclosed publicly its internal rate of return, or what it makes on its fund investments. But it did invest in firms like AppLovin, Scopely and others with successful exits.

Strategy in the face of market headwinds

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Gilded Destiny got funding from Griffin’s SOF. As for the “attention war” that Epyllion’s Matthew Ball wrote about, he said the competition for attention is indeed fierce, with platforms like TikTok using machine learning to tune the algorithm to surface content that deepens engagement. That’s considerable competition for the time of gamers.

At the same time, Tuosto said, “There are pockets of very visible growth and opportunity. Roblox has unlocked a massive new category of incremental engagement, very different than other platforms that existed before, and found a new niche and a new platform to grow. And those are the type of things that end up driving market growth.”

He added, “We think AI technologies are going to be a big tailwind that unlock not only a lot more time on the consumer side to play games and to entertain themselves, but also to create new and novel experiences. This could be one of those step functions higher, like we’ve seen traditionally on distribution. Like when mobile came online, it went from zero to $100 billion market in the course of 15 years. And that, of course, is exactly how this market tends to work, where a new platform comes online and it opens up new incremental market opportunity.”

The strength of the Steam games market

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Expedition: Into Darkness got funding from Griffin’s SOF. He said the consoles did something similar at a smaller scale. And looking at the PC market, there’s sustained growth and sustained engagement. You can see through wishlists what kind of potential a game has, and that helps the firm sort through the 20,000 or so games hitting Steam every year.

“This is incredible for us to see the world’s oldest gaming market, where it all started, become the market that has the highest CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in terms of growth rates on content outside of the triple-A arena. That’s where we’re zeroing in on this hyper growth.”

He noted the PC market has extraordinarily robust, organic discovery. It has gameplay attracting people to go try something new, and then they evangelize it.

“They go tell their friends these are games where they don’t have big marketing budgets and they don’t even have the polish of the triple-A games, and yet the game play and the systems are so good and robust that they can get people excited,” Tuosto said. “That’s where we’re starting to see just tremendous investment opportunities because the budgets are so limited in many of these cases. And the upside when there is product-market fit found can be so enormous. You see examples like Manor Lords with a single dev, of course, supported by others, but a single person coding a game like that. It’s a magnum opus, and it explodes to north of $100 million in revenue in early access.”

He said that’s the type of potential that the market has, and with the support of a capital partner like Griffin, those numbers can be a lot higher, Tuosto said.

Given the headwinds Ball pointed out, Tuosto said, “We’re not ones to abandon the market because of some near-term headwinds. We’re much more focused on finding those growth opportunities within this market that are large enough to see lots and lots of opportunity for the right teams with the right vision.”

The indie games opportunity

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Darkwood 2 got funding from Griffin’s SOF. And Tuosto noted that Ball was positive on indie gaming as a subset of the market, as well as Roblox.

As for how dry the market is, Tuosto said that rumors that there is no money to be had are not true. He noted Griffin has been active and some of its peers are as well.

“Things are up substantially from the nadir, but still very different market environment than 2021 or even 2022 where we saw volumes that were many multiples of where they are today. But for the best teams, I don’t think that should be discouraging at all. I think that the best teams that are prepared to really devote themselves to the next chapter of their careers to building something often start in times where capital is constrained and the macroeconomic picture is cloudy,” Tuosto said. “It’s really the passion and commitment that gets them motivated, even in what can be the worst of times, to go build something.”

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Begone Beast got funding from Griffin’s SOF. He said he loves finding teams that are motivated in spite of those headwinds.

“For us, at the time when valuations are elevated, sometimes it’s not the most disciplined teams that end up sort of attracting capital. So this is a market where we’re redoubling our efforts to go find extraordinary and committed teams,” he said.

Tuosto said that it’s important for devs to take really big creative risks and go for something where maybe the conventional wisdom would say that this game has no chance.

“At the end of the day, the market decides. You come up with something, you put up a video of gameplay on Steam, you’re starting to be able to check and see if your vision resonates with people,” he said. “It might be a niche audience, but do people feel passionate about this vision? And that’s where we can get involved and provide capital that could potentially grow the size of the pie tremendously.”

Disclosure: Levin is a strategic adviser for GamesBeat.

The post {LINK REMOVED} appeared first on {LINK REMOVED}.

6 May - Syndicated News | 0 Comments

The indie game studio {LINK REMOVED}Turnkey Games has announced Apart, a gory adventure game where you play as a severed arm and a zombie child.

As wacky as that sounds, it’s a serious game with a haunting story of memory, loss, and a
bond persisting beyond death, said the founders of Dallas-based Turnkey Games — former id Software developers Tony Garza and Richard O’Neal — in an interview with GamesBeat.

Apart is a third-person adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic world told entirely from the perspective of two playable characters; a severed arm and a zombie child. (Yes, I had to repeat that again so it sinks in). The game invites players to experience the apocalypse from the perspective of the undead. You can follow it on Steam here.

The story

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] The arm is a character in Apart, and so is the zombie child. Source: TurnKey Games Apart tells a story of a world plunged into darkness in the wake of a technological breakthrough that repurposes biological remains into an eco-centric fuel. Apart follows two characters: an undead child paired with a fading parental presence embodied in a severed arm and explores a powerful bond that persists into death.

Apart embraces absurdity while balancing horror elements with dark humor that allow moments of playful charm to shine through in a world devoid of hope.

Gameplay in Apart centers on seamlessly switching between its two playable characters.
Leaning into its dark playful tone, the child is a shambling zombie. Limbs can be lost, replaced, and reassembled on the fly, turning dismemberment into a core mechanic.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kaRy8KcsGsI?feature=oembed In contrast the severed arm is agile. Able to explore hard-to-reach areas, slip past enemies
undetected, or puppeteer undead hosts, turning foes into tools for survival. Players are encouraged to think creatively to navigate a world designed to pull them apart.

“We’re making a game that explores a family connection that persists past death and we’re using bizarre mechanics plus one of our favorite settings to do it,” said Garza, creative director at TurnKey Games.

Key Features

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] It’s a bright and sunny day in the world of Apart. Source: TurnKey Games ● Play as the infected, experience the zombie apocalypse from the perspective of a severed arm and an infected child.
Two playable Characters:
○ Modular zombie child, fall apart, tumble around, put yourself back together.
○ A nimble severed arm who guides them through their perilous journey. Slip past foes
undetected, navigate hard-to-reach areas, and puppeteer undead beings.
● Explore a hand-crafted, lore-rich world oozing with narrative depth at every corner.
● Puzzles, action, and exploration intertwined with deep lore about the fall of society due to corporate malfeasance.
● Original soundtrack composed by David Levy ( DOOM, RWBY and Justice League)
● Built in Unreal Engine 5. Coming to PC, MacOS, and handhelds.
● Wishlist starting May 6th 2026 on Steam. The hope is to publish the game in the fall.

As for raising money, they’re open to it if the right partner comes along. They’re looking forward to telling different stories in the Apart universe. But they’re not actively seeking to give away their freedom.

Origins

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Tony Garza (left) and Richard ONeal of TurnKey Games, maker of Apart. Source: TurnKey Games Garza was the art director behind the Doom remake seriers, while ONeal was technical director. They’re two cousins who have spent nearly a decade building games together. They set out to build something entirely their own. A partnership rooted in shared ambition, comradery, and a genuine love for the craft. It’s a studio born from creative and
technical expertise. With games driven by tight collaboration, bold visions, and meaningful player experiences.

“The two of us have wanted to make a game together for a long time. TurnKey Games is the culmination of years of experience and a dream finally realized. Apart is an absolute passion project and we are thrilled to have such a strong debut title,” said ONeal, who is technical director at TurnKey Games.

“We spent years at id Software. I worked on Doom and separated and then started developing an IP. We have had the itch to make an indie game for a long time,” Garza said.

He was there for about 10 years in the art department and left in 2025 to work with his cousin, ONeal, who was an engineer.

“I wanted to make an indie game for a while. I’ve been fan of indie games. We started with a game mechanic, which was built around a character that was modular and could fall part. And we started pulling at that thread. We’re fans of the zombie genre, and we developed a story around it,” Garza said.

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Zombies are the survivors in the world of Apart. Source: TurnKey Games Garza said he always wanted to make his own game since he was young.

“That’s why I got into games,” he said. “You want to make games, and eventually you want to build an IP all your own. We are working towards that with Apart.”

But he had good experiences working on the Wolfenstein: The New Colossus and Prey games. On the Doom trilogy, he became the art director for Doom Eternal and The Ancient Gods DLC. On Doom: The Dark Ages, Garza was the design director.

Once Garza set up shop, ONeal left id Software and joined him as technical director. They figured out the scope of what they could accomplish. O’Neal also felt that, after finishing the three games in the Doom series, it was a natural time to move on.

Together, they started without raising money so they could get the freedom to work on what they wanted to do.

“We’re leaning into the unconventional [nature] of our game,” Garza said. “Having the freedom to be able to do that is priceless.”

The team has four core members. There are contractors as well and some student interns form the University of Texas at Dallas. Garza and ONeal enjoy the camaraderie of working together, not just as cousins but as quality-oriented developers.

“Tony’s a full-stack 3D video game artist. I’m full stack on the tech side,” ONeal said. “It’s a match made in heaven.”

ONeal said the team has focused on the Unreal Engine 5 to get high quality but also so the team doesn’t have to reinvent everything.

The wacky idea

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] An arm in the hospital. Source: TurnKey Games This game has no traditional good guys and bad guys. The world has been destroyed, and the zombies are all that’s left. The humans are gone. You play as zombies.

“We’re flipping that trope on its head,” Garza said.

I asked them how they came up with the wacky idea of the, um, sentient arm.

“We’re pulling on a string that we feel is kind of unique. It’s a character that’s completely modular. You can lose limbs, you can reattach them, and then also you play as a separate arm, which has its unique abilities, where it can zip around super fast,” Garza said. “Rich said it earlier that it is like an RC car. I thought that was a good explanation. You can pilot the Undead with it and that’s a lot of fun. The mechanic of falling apart came first.”

I asked them what the story was behind the arm.

“We don’t want to give away too much, but there is a family connection there that persists past death, right?” Garza said.

Besides the arm, you can also play as a young zombie child. As for the story?

“On the wake of a technological breakthrough, the world was destroyed, and this breakthrough used repurposed biological remains as ecocentric fuel,” Garza said. “There’s a bit of commentary there about a technology that’s dangerous. It balances elements of horror with dark humor, you know, and ultimately, it tells the story about these two characters and their relationship in their past life.”

The arm is like a fading parental presence of someone who knew the zombie child. The child shambles around like a zombie, but she can be fully dismembered and then reform without being hurt.

“We turn dismemberment into a core mechanic with her. And then the hand is agile. It can get to hard to reach areas. It can slip past enemies. It has a it has a wide variety of unique abilities, and they play both distinctly. You’ll be switching between the two characters dynamically and seamlessly throughout the game to solve puzzles while under pressure
or just survive in a world that’s designed to pull them apart,” Garza said.

I asked them whether it was indie or triple A. ONeal said it had elements of both. ONeal is using his background in performance optimization, and he wants to make sure the game runs great on the Steam Deck and also looks great on high-end hardware.

“We’re leaning into the gameplay elements. We are shooting above our weight class,” Garza said. “Our game feels bigger than indie it. And the graphics look amazing. The game plays really tight, and from a technical standpoint, we’re going to surprise a lot of our audience with how our game performs and plays.”

The game has a narrative campaign. It might take casual gamers seven or eight hours to complete, and it will have replayability value. The gameplay situations are dynamic, where you can solve a puzzle in one playthrough and have to do something different the next time because you’re missing your legs on the second time.

The post-apocalyptic world

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] TurnKey Games is in Dallas, Texas. Source: TurnKey Games “You awaken in a world that’s already been destroyed. You’re piecing together what happened to this world as you go, while recovering your memories along the way and telling a larger story about these characters and how they’ve come to be where they are,” Garza said.

The arm can serve as a puppeteer for the zombies, almost like the rat in the film Ratatouille. The arm can possess a zombie. You can try to slip past enemies and make more progress, but the zombies might come back to bite you later on if you don’t take them out. The girl zombie can work on a puzzle while the hand controls another zombie that protects the girl.

The company is targeting the game at horror fans as well as zombie fans and those who love indie games.

The devs had a long discussion about whether to add co-op mode for two human players. But they decided to focus their indie resources on making a single-player game where the player could swap between two different characters.

The indie path is best

[img]{LINK REMOVED}[/img] Apart is coming in 2026. Source: TurnKey Games As for the state of the industry, ONeal said the tools today are vastly better than a decade ago. It’s allowing indie studios to flourish, but how you use the tools is really important, he said. That’s why his team chose Unreal. Trying to create your own engine is too costly.

But the team isn’t using AI. Garza said, “We are staying away from it. We are doing handcrafted art. There’s no AI-generated content in this game.”

I noted that’s a common conclusion now, as both players and developers seem to hate AI in its current form.

“You don’t want to hold your project or product back by not embracing a technological advancement,” ONeal said. “But at the same time, consumers are just more aware of stuff like that. Gamers appreciate it when they know that everything was handcrafted. We’re proud of that, and we’re scrappy.”

The post {LINK REMOVED} appeared first on {LINK REMOVED}.