Hooded Horse’s Tim Bender is putting $100 million behind indie games
Griffin Gaming Partners' Special Opportunities Fund has already backed 15 projects, including Menace and a handful of announced Steam titles.
Tim Bender, the CEO of Hooded Horse and the publisher behind Manor Lords, is now also helping lead a new $100 million fund aimed at indie games. Griffin Gaming Partners created the Special Opportunities Fund to back promising smaller projects, and Bender is serving as managing director for the effort.
Griffin said the idea is rooted in how often smaller teams have delivered strong results without giant budgets. The fund also represents a slice of the firm’s wider $1.5 billion in assets, which gives it plenty of room to spread that money across a wide slate of projects.
That slate is already in motion. Griffin said the fund has backed 15 games so far, with one released title, eight announced projects, and six still under wraps. The released game is Menace, a turn-based tactics game. Among the announced projects are Darkwood 2, Kinstrife, Vaunted, and Highland Keep. The unannounced group includes a sci-fi grand strategy game tied to a known book and TV franchise, along with a god game with physics, a dinosaur multiplayer RPG, and a hard sci-fi space ARPG.
It is a broad mix, but it still fits Hooded Horse’s lane: strategy, simulation, and niche PC projects that can find an audience without blockbuster budgets. For indie teams, another $100 million in the mix is hard to ignore.
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