Draft poster · the finished cut will appear here
What happened
Game Developer interviewed former id Software developers Tony Garza and Richard O’Neal about leaving a large studio to co-found Turnkey Games. Their debut, Apart, is described as a third-person horror adventure. The founders say they bootstrapped the company, kept it lean, and directed limited resources toward development, contractors, business costs, and marketing.
How it works
Garza says the team prioritizes features that materially improve the game and cuts or simplifies ideas that do not. O’Neal says systems designed for a large studio, many platforms, many developers, and years of production can become unnecessary engineering work for an indie team. Their approach is to start small, scope realistically while expecting features to grow, and use the shipped game to decide what deserves to come next.
That is a production loop: establish a boundary, finish a coherent product, observe what it teaches, and then expand from evidence. It is less about limiting ambition than about making the first piece capable of producing information.
Why it matters
The highest-leverage production choice may be making the first game finishable. Faster tools can make it easier to attempt more scope, but they do not make a larger scope strategically safer.
What we don’t know yet
These are the founders’ production judgments and the studio’s own account, not a universal formula or an independent audit of Turnkey’s process. The story does not establish how Apart will perform commercially or what the next project will be.
Source: Game Developer, Chris Kerr, September 10, 2026 - original interview