Indieventure (Indieventure Podcast)

In Episode 8 of Indieventure, we re-introduce an old favourite concept of ours from days gone by: the Indieventure Vault, an eclectic mind-palace of our own construction where we store the very best indie games, blending personal favourites with undeniable classics.

Previous inductees — which we take the time to re-induct, since this Vault is completely legally distinct from any other indie game Vaults you might be thinking about — are two all-time favourite indie games from each of us. Rebecca carefully places Monster Prom and Firewatch on a commemorative shelf, Rachel chucks Kentucky Route Zero and Return of the Obra Dinn in the same vague direction, and Liam drop-kicks Hypnospace Outlaw and Paradise Killer into a hole in the ground, but like, respectfully. Everyone's very on-form.

Then it's time to introduce some new games to the collection, and this time we've each selected one indie game that we all feel is just far too important to omit. For Liam, that's just got to be Stardew Valley; Rachel makes a compelling case for the enduring appeal of Disco Elysium; and Rebecca uses science (after a fashion) to conclude that Hades really needs to be there too. And, not least of all because 10 vaulted games is a nice round number to start off with, we also put Dredge on a special shelf of its own to indicate that it was our very first Indieventure Game of the Year in 2023.

Hyperfixations this week see Rachel still obsessed with The Traitors: Series 2, Rebecca still obsessed with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, and Liam reading Masters of Doom by David Kushner like a proper adult.

This summer, the good folks over at Indie Cup once again asked three podcasters known for opining at length on the subject of indie games to be jurors at their festival, and once again Liam, Rachel, and Rebecca were all too happy to take part. This time was a little different, however, as instead of the UK having a branch of the festival all to itself like last year, for 2024 Indie Cup held one big festival encompassing all of Europe!

Even though we were only jurors in one category (Critics' Choice, thanks so much again to the organisers for putting far more faith in the professionalism of our opinions than we sometimes do ourselves!), we still looked at literally hundreds of games over the course of the summer — and, now that the results are in, we've gathered together to discuss some of our personal highlights from the festival.

We begin our debriefing, as is only right and fair, with the winner of the Indie Cup Europe '24 Critics' Choice Award and the only double-winner in this year's festival: the very deserving Phonopolis, a charming and visually striking dystopian resistance puzzle game by Amanita Design. We're all genuinely delighted it won, especially since it was the only game we were all equally taken with when playing through this year's shortlist.

We then move on to some worthy runners-up from our category's shortlist: retro-stylised gardening horror Grunn, surreal-yet-wholesome exploration puzzler Henry Halfhead, toy-themed musical sandbox Oddada, historical courtroom mystery based on true events The Darkest Files, and interactive historical fiction drama Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina).

Finally, we dedicate a little time to just a few of the many games from the Critics' Choice Award longlist that didn't make the final cut, but which at least one of us would have loved to see make it into the final round, including Aquapark Tycoon, Fruitbus, KreatureKind, Nurikabe World, and Sulfur.

Onto hyperfixations and Rachel has been playing The Iron Rig, the latest DLC addition to this podcast's collective 2023 GOTY Dredge, and yup it sure is more Dredge — what more could you ask for? Liam has, if you can believe it, read yet another sad book: Erasure by Percival Everett, best known now as the basis for the Oscar-winning movie American Fiction. (Word of warning: American Fiction is a comedy; Erasure is… decidedly not.) Rebecca, who really shouldn't be allowed to drive this thing because it clearly sends her on a power trip, quickly shouts out American Vandal on Netflix and the forthcoming Ace Attorney Investigations Collection before getting down to her real latest hyperfixation: The Tomb Raider Compendium, a doorstopper collected edition of early-2000s comic books she spent over a decade trying to get hold of, before finally becoming the proud owner of a copy this week.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Unbelievably, it's been almost exactly five months since the Indieventure trio last checked in and just chatted about what we've been playing recently — and with June being a touch busy, what with it being Pride Month and our need to arrange travel plans both real and fictional, we totally missed a Steam Next Fest in there too. Time to fix both of those oversights with a laid-back episode which, I'm afraid, is going to put several new games on your wishlist.

 

Liam has been going all vigilante in noirish imsim Fallen Aces, having a surprisingly relaxing time stacking shelves in Supermarket Simulator, and kicking things with his gremlin leg in Anger Foot. Rebecca's found herself sneaking around an oil rig filled with Lovecraftian monsters who are curiously eager to show their many faces in Still Wakes the Deep, and reliving her days as a librarian restocking shelves and getting creeped out by an empty building (please, please be empty) in Amanda the Adventurer 2. Rachel's had a bit of a busman's holiday in journalistic sci-fi visual novel Times & Galaxy, and mixing it up a bit with nonlinear mansion exploration puzzle Blue Prince. Rebecca and Rachel both also played Crush House, which appeals to both of them on a deep level but for very different reasons, Rachel being all about its pitch-perfect reality TV spoof and Rebecca loving how it creatively deconstructs life sims and dating sims.

 

In our latest hyperfixations, Liam and Rachel have had something close to a spiritual awakening listening to Charlie XCX's Brat album on repeat. Rebecca can't quite match their energy on this occasion, but does put forward a good case for Audible-exclusive '00s cult comedy revival Green Wing: Resuscitated.

 

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

It's a Leap Year, and the strange minds at Indieventure have taken this as a sign that we need to do a thematically appropriate episode about a gaming trope all three of us happen to love! Yes, since 2024 has an extra day, we decided to dedicate that sliver of bonus time to talk all about time loops. Trust us, it makes sense.

Because of the fluid nature of this discussion we don't limit ourselves just to indie games on this occasion, although they remain a heavy focus because, y'know, if there's a good theme out there then there's 10 great indies and a couple of solid AAs to every AAA that nailed it, right? In this episode we talk about a whole bunch of timey-wimey titles including Deathloop, The Forgotten City, Hades, Heaven's Vault, In Stars and Time, Layers of Fear, Life Is Strange, Outer Wilds, P.T., The Sexy Brutale, Slay the Princess, The Stanley Parable, and Ultros. We also touch upon a few other games that aren't technically about time loops but evoke similar feelings thanks to the iterative way you're encouraged to play, such as Frostpunk and Hitman.

We follow this up with a shorter discussion about how the shared experience of the pandemic has influenced storytelling in indie games in general, including but not limited to a notably increased use of the time loop trope; touching on 1000xRESIST, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Full Void, Goodbye Volcano High, In Stars and Time (again), Mediterranea Inferno, and Roman Sands RE:Build.

That's not even a comprehensive list of our favourite time loop games, and we could literally have talked about this for another several episodes. Sadly, unlike the inhabitants of a time loop, we need to wrap things up eventually — but not before we share our latest hyperfixations! Rebecca has rather unexpectedly finished Romancelvania, and extremely unsurprisingly recently re-watched the live action Ace Attorney movie; Liam has caved to Rachel's influence and begun watching The Traitors, and has also finished playing Stardew Valley (apparently that's a thing you can do?!); and Rachel has been watching True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of the acclaimed weird crime thriller anthology series which is finally back after a five-year hiatus.

Welcome back to Indieventure EXTRA, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry.

In this episode, Liam sits down with the directors at Kaizen Game Works to chat about their highly anticipated next title: the open-world mascot management crime adventure Promise Mascot Agency. Rachel Noy (Art Director), Oli Clarke Smith (Game Director) and Phil Crabtree (Technical Director) discuss the game's unusual origins, what it's like to work alongside Ikumi Nakamura and the - quite frankly - bizarre story of how the voice of Kazuma Kiryu himself, Takaya Kuroda, came to voice their protagonist.

The Kaizen Trio also reflect on (our beloved) Paradise Killer five years after its original release.

Enjoy!

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

It’s time for another Indieventure EXTRA, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry.

We’re pretty PC-focused on Indieventure so in this episode, Rachel has a chat with Oscar Taylor-Kent about PlayStation indies. Oscar is the Games Editor at GamesRadar+ and previous editor of PLAY Magazine and Official PlayStation Magazine so he’s the perfect person to discuss this topic with. Have a listen if you’d like to hear us both take a trip down memory lane and have a gab about Sony’s history with indie games.

You can find Oscar and his work on Twitter, BlueSky, and his GamesRadar+ profile. 

Enjoy~

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode, the Indieventure trio ask ourselves a surprisingly complicated question: how do you play video games specifically in January? Do you take the time to go back over some exciting titles from the year before that you still haven't got around to yet, or do you write all that off and start the new year with a blank slate ready to fill up with brand-new releases?

Obviously we're all games media types, so our answers are slightly skewed from the norm – listening back, it's only just occurred to me that none of us said "in January I mainly play the games I received for Christmas, of course!" So there's that, but still, the resultant chat should leave you with a pleasant mix of recent and upcoming game recommendations, as well as some drawn from a bit further back.

The brand-new indie titles we've been checking out in January 2025 include Cursed Digicam, Eternal Strands, Nurikabe World, The Roottrees Are Dead, and – of course – Citizen Sleeper 2. But we also reach a full five years into the past for a look back on Tangle Tower, and take a peek into the future with the demo for intriguing upcoming game Locator.

We end, as always, with our most recent round of hyperfixations. Rebecca has been watching indie horror films again and thinks you should all go and see Presence, which recently got its belated theatrical release after premiering at Sundance a full year ago. Rachel's recent disenchantment with modern cinema has led her to revisit some of the classics from her film school days, which has her feeling enthusiastic about movies again (even as her specific rankings spark some lively debates!). Liam has been reading Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent and does recommend it with some massive caveats, but his actual hyperfixation for a much better time is the dark comedy TV show Search Party.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

'Twas eighteen nights before Christmas, when all through the house,

We were recommending indies, to a skeleton and a mouse.

Jolly Saint Nick is a guest on the show,

Spreading good cheer with a wink and a ho.

His cough is persistent, a fun phlegmy hack,

But he gains a pile of indies to put in his sack.

The trio wraps up with some dinner guest chatter,

A parade of indie characters who feast from food platters.

When all's said and done, another episode out of sight,

We wish a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

 

Oh also our hyperfixations this week are A Profound Waste Of Time by Caspian Whistler, What We Do In The Shadows and In Stars And Time.

 

Music is Cigarette Boat by Marc Torch.

 

Do you need to say #SPON #AD if all you're advertising is your own free-to-join Discord server? That's the question our intrepid Indieventure trio ask ourselves this episode, as we return to answer more of your listener questions in a shameless plug for the lovely little community space we've built up for ourselves over the past few months!

If you've ever wondered which indie game character would react best to their beloved partner waking up one morning to discover they were just a tiny little mealworm lying on the pillow, amazingly it turns out you're not alone – unless you're the person who submitted that very thought experiment to us in the first place, in which case… well, now everyone else has to think about it too! We also mull over questions such as which indie game character(s) would be most helpful if you needed to hide a body and which Monster Prom monsters we'd all be, as well as some slightly more serious topics, like our dream "X meets Y" indie game elevator pitch, and which indie games we'd like to see expanded into other media.

But that's not all because a recently-released AA title has landed right at the intersection of all our interests, which means it's time for another group-review-in-progress! We've all played Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1 and – between Life is Strange die-hard Rebecca, Life is Strange enjoyer Rachel, and Life is Strange novice Liam – we can guarantee some interesting chats when it comes to Dontnod's self-published spiritual successor to the game that made their name. Be sure to check back in with us sometime around late April-ish for a longer discussion as we review Tape 2 and the game as a whole.

Last but not least, of course, are our hyperfixations, and Rachel is still firmly in the grip of Real Housewives fever. Rebecca has finally rolled credits on Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Happy Home Paradise DLC and is absolutely obsessed with the DJ KK remixes of every song in the game you get at the end, which you can listen to here. And Liam has not only finished Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but he's also found time to check out recent retro indie racer Parking Garage Rally Circuit.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

Believe it or not it's been one whole trip around the sun since we released the first ever episode of Indieventure! And to celebrate, we've opened up the mailbag once again to answer your listener questions.

Ever wondered how we find out about exciting upcoming indies to talk about on the podcast, or which indie video game we'd most like to see get the tabletop treatment? Maybe you're curious as to our respective favourite games on the late lamented indie machine that was the Nintendo 3DS — or want to hear us go off-topic once more while we debate which Ace Attorney case would make the best stand-alone game? All this and more will be revealed, including an incredibly cursed final question that must be heard to be believed.

This episode isn't really about any games in particular… don't worry though, here's a handy summary of the titles we touch on for all my list goblins out there! This episode is an opportunity to fill your earholes with some lovely (or not) discussions of Against the Storm, Boyfriend Dungeon, Braid, Citizen Sleeper, Control, Dredge, Gunman Clive, Harold Halibut, The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories, Monster Prom, Paradise Killer, A Park Full of Cats, Peggle, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, Severed, Slice & Dice, Steamworld Heist, Still Wakes the Deep, Stray Cats in Cozy Town, ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area, and Wilmot's Warehouse.

And, in this episode's pre-GOTY round-up of what we've been playing lately, we take a trip down false-memory lane with UFO 50, an 8-bit console that never was; discuss whether inventive perspective-flipped dating sim The Crush House is being held back by a broken in-game economy; and reach a surprising consensus on recent body horror streaming hit Mouthwashing.

We end as ever with our latest round of hyperfixations! Rebecca has been reading Jacqueline Wilson's Think Again, Rachel has a new reality TV obsession in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Liam has gone further down the Resident Evil rabbit hole than even he ever expected to get with The Mercenaries 3D.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

TOO MANY GREAT GAMES RELEASED IN MAY. Don’t get us wrong, we love being bombarded with cool indies but, MY GOD, May has been wild. In this episode, the Indieventure gang sit down to chat about this phenomenon and get into which games they played out of the torrent of releases.

Liam’s been exploring a creepy abandoned theme park filled with monstrous weirdos in the survival horror game Crow Country and brushing up on his spelling in the fill-in-the-blank dungeon-crawler Cryptmaster. Rebecca flirted with cute monsters (classic Rebecca antics) in horror dating sim Sucker for Love: Date to Die For, while also enjoying the fun animal hijinks of wholesome exploration game Little Kitty, Big City. Rachel went spelunking in a subterranean labyrinth filled with strange creatures in Animal Well and had her brain fried by the intense puzzle powerhouse that is Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. She also checked out 1000xResist and cried over alien invaders, sad clones, and mommy issues. The gang finishes up this bumper crop of indie picks with a discussion about Hades 2 which released into Steam Early Access this month.

To wrap up the episode it’s hyperfixations! Rebecca binged season 5 of Fargo which has taken a refreshing new direction from its other seasons, Liam took a nostalgia trip watching Jackass Forever, and no hyperfixation from Rachel this episode as she’s been resting. Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.

Welcome back to Indieventure EXTRA, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry.

In this episode, Liam was joined by Xalavier Nelson Jr., the creative director at Strange Scaffold, an indie studio responsible for hits like El Paso, Elsewhere, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator and An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs. Joining the industry as a journalist at age 12, this BAFTA-nominated creator has worked on over 100 games over the last eight years.

Xalavier spoke to us about scope, sustainability and the power of intent.

You can find Xalavier on Twitter as well as TikTok, or you can find out more about his work over at the Strange Scaffold website.

Enjoy!

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hello and welcome back to Indieventure Extra, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry.

Liam recently sat down with Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide) and Karla Zimonja (Gone Home) to chat about Wanderstop, their recently released game about a burned-out warrior attempting to find solace by running a tea shop in the woods.

If you've yet to play Wanderstop, there are no spoilers to be found here, so don't worry. Davey and Karla mainly chatted about how the game came to be, what it's like to make a game about burnout that is actively burning you out as you're making it, as well as the challenges - and the benefits - of making a narrative-led game within the cosy genre framework.

We also spoke about Boro. Best Boy Boro.

Here is the TTRPG about parrying that Karla mentioned in the Hyperfixations section.

Enjoy!

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

Let's be honest with you, dear listeners: the Indieventure trio are making this podcast in our spare time around our full-time day jobs and, sometimes, we simply can't find the time or just don't feel like writing a detailed script. Which is why, on this occasion (and at random intervals going forward) we've crowd-sourced our theme for this episode! We asked and you lovely people answered, throwing out some great questions that we were only too delighted to respond to in the form of our trademark lengthy rambles.

Ever wondered what everyone's first indie game was? Which indie characters we'd love to see in Smash Bros.? The indie game we'd most like to see get a movie adaptation? If we have any secretly shameful indie faves? Or whether we have any opinions on tabletop games? (Spoiler alert for that last one: turns out, we do.)

I mean, obviously there's a high chance you did wonder about all this, because we don't have that many listeners, so there's good odds that the person reading this right now did submit some of these questions. In which case: hi! And thank you! It's been a pleasure, and I can assure you that all these queries and more become the subject of lively discussions (if not yielding actual answers) by the end of the episode.

We finish as ever with our latest hyperfixations, and while this isn't a competitive section, Liam definitely wins by becoming absolutely obsessed with Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy of New Weird sci-fi/horror novels, a preoccupation that Rachel and Rebecca are only too happy to encourage since it turns out we're all big fans of the series. Rebecca, meanwhile, has a lot of good things to say about Re/Member, a Japanese teen horror film featuring not one but two time-loops that got absolutely slated in reviews when it came out on Netflix, but which in her opinion was close to 5-star quality (but then again, it is an extremely Rebecca-coded film). And Rachel has been playing a short but sweet (and surprisingly queer) indie mystery game: This Bed We Made, which sadly got a bit lost in the shuffle when it launched towards the end of last year despite great reviews.

And finally: you might have noticed that our music is back at long last! With huge thanks to Ollie Newbury for composing a bespoke theme for Indieventure that we can call our very own. Check out Ollie's work on Instagram if you want to hear more of his stuff, because he's very talented and cool.

This week, we’re trying something different on Indieventure: an interview! 

We’ve wanted to interview developers on the podcast for a while now, especially those responsible for games that mean a lot to us. We’ve been talking about how we might do this since the days of [REDACTED PODCAST], but have always struggled to find a way that feels right. You see, the thing we love the most about Indieventure is that it’s basically just a long, chaotic Discord call that we publish to the wider world. However, that’s not a vibe that’s very - let’s say - compatible with a traditional interview format. The thought of forcing a developer to sit quietly while we talk about squash for 40 minutes feels borderline illegal, to be honest.

So, instead, we’ve decided to split interviews away from the main podcast and release them as smaller "bonus" episodes like the one you’re listening to today. As you may have noticed, this one is actually being released in a regular slot (none of us were free to record this week, soz), but moving forward the plan is to release them in between regular episodes.

The first instalment in this new series is a conversation with Will Todd and James Carbutt, the co-founders of Coal Supper!, who recently released Thank Goodness You’re Here! to critical acclaim.

We hope you enjoy this inaugural episode of our interview show, and we’ll be back next episode with our usual nonsense!

If you love indie games and love listening to friendly folks chat about indie games, congrats! You’ve found the right podcast! It’s the first official episode of Indiventure and after an exciting reunion Liam, Rebecca, and Rachel get right into what they’ve been playing recently. 

This episode features A Space for the Unbound, Goodbye Volcano High, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Cocoon, The Case of the Golden Idol, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (plus a bit of Gunbrella).

 Liam's video! 2023 Is An Unbelievable Year For Games.

Music is Cigarette Boat by Marc Torch

This week's episode of Indieventure has a bit of a show-and-tell format, since it's been a while since we just checked in with the indie games everyone's been playing in their down time.

After our last episode on this February's Steam Next Fest, Rachel has mostly been playing loads more demos! Mech-pilot farming sim Lightyear Frontier has emerged as her most-played Next Fest demo this time around, and might even be poised to find its way onto the best-ever farming sims list of our resident connoisseurs of the genre. She also has a lot of good words for INDIKA, an experimental psychological adventure game examining religious orthodoxy — here's a link to the Polygon article we discuss at this point in the episode.

Never one to cruelly leave us without a recommendation for a great indie title we can play in full right now, though, Rachel has also recently checked out text-based horror game Home Safety Hotline. Long-time listeners will know that Rachel isn't always our biggest horror advocate, so rest assured that this one is pretty safe to play for anyone looking for a good creepy story, regardless of your comfort levels with some of the genre's more intense tropes.

Noted Valentine's Day sceptic Rebecca has nevertheless been in the mood for romance this month, specifically in video games that let her woo hot monsters. So she's been playing a few rounds of Doomsday Paradise, a Monster Prom-inspired multiplayer card battler that got a bit lost in the shuffle when it first released back in November. She's also revisited two monster dating mash-ups she previously bounced off of, Helltaker and Romancelvania — and quickly DNF'd one all over again while becoming hooked on the other this time around.

Liam, meanwhile, has been enjoying two very different roguelikes: early access city builder Roots of Yggdrasil, which sees a band of Vikings attempting to outrun Ragnarok by expanding their civilisation across the Nine Realms with the use of deck-building puzzles; and Go Mecha Ball, the twin stick shooter starring a cat piloting a mech through a pinball machine. You might remember we talked about the latter game before after playing the demo, which is when we first uttered the now-immortal line LIAM LIKE CRONCH.

In hyperfixations this week, Rebecca's obsession with the new Wicked movie trailer hasn't quite overtaken her desire to binge as much of the Pokémon anime as possible before Pokémon TV goes offline for good at the end of March. Rachel has recently visited the British Library's Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition, which leads to far too many good book, film, TV, and game recommendations to list in full here. And Liam has finally binned off The O.C. and started watching a TV show he'd actually recommend to others, namely the recent remake of Mr. & Mrs. Smith starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine.

Happy Halloween Indieventure listeners! With the serendipitous launch of this episode on the spookiest day of the year, we couldn't resist the opportunity to peer into a parallel universe and imagine what life would be like if we became the thing we fear the most: yet another podcast dedicated to the biggest games everyone's already talking about. That's right: it's time for AAAventure (pronounced as scream-venture, with an apology in advance to headphone users).   But horror mother Rebecca is at the helm and because she can't just be normal ever, there's a bit more to today's discussion than a dry recounting of our favourite AAA games. No, instead the three wyrd sisters (yes, Liam counts) of Indieventure are collaborating on building a Frankensteinian monster of a AAA game by stitching together all the tropes that we love most about big-budget blockbusters. Fear not, though, because we're also brewing a handy banishing potion out of all the most cursed items we've found in indie games, just in case things get out of hand.   Of course, it being Halloween means that there are officially only two months left of 2024, so it's time for another update on what we've all been playing ahead of those all-important GOTY picks. Rachel has been enjoying unique dialogue puzzler Great God Grove, Rebecca has also been getting her word on in typing-based action-RPG Cryptmaster, and Liam has come to the conclusion that UFO 50 might be deserving of about 50 GOTY noms all by itself.   And, even though it's been a weird episode, we end with the familiarity of hyperfixations. Rachel's is a bit melancholy: PLAY magazine, a print outlet she's written for extensively, was officially shuttered this month, so she's been reflecting on the good times. Liam chooses to highlight Party House, one of the games that make up UFO 50, as really something special. And Rebecca's been working on her review of Life is Strange: Double Exposure, which naturally has brought up a lot of feelings for our resident LIS fanatic.   Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury, and it's a testament to his talents that it still sounds great even though we've messed with it a bit for this episode as part of the whole spooky goof. You can find Ollie on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and can now join our brand-new Discord!

Well, here we are, folks: our final episode of 2023! It's been a wild ride of a year and we've had some wonderful times recording podcasts and, of course, playing indie games. Lots and lots of indie games. So many, in fact, that our GOTY episode ran a little long despite our best intentions — but, since we're taking a slightly longer three-week break between episodes while we all head off for the holidays, we hope this feature-length episode will tide you over until we come back on January 11th!

Usually this is where we'd list the games we talk about in the episode, but since this is technically an award show we're running here today, we thought we'd build up the suspense a little and keep it a surprise for our lovely listeners. Here's a clue though: there are 13 games here on our collective GOTY list — including the one we've crowned the inaugural Indieventure GOTY — and we've podcasted about all of them at some point over the course of the past year! Even our hyperfixations this time around are shrouded in festive mystery, because trust me, they really went some places and we're sure you'll want to hear it.

All that remains for us to do is wish you a merry Christmas, happy holidays, or a peaceful winter break if you don't celebrate at this time of year. We are all so incredibly grateful for an amazing first year of podcasting, and it's all thanks to you that we get to keep on doing this! Thank you and see you in 2024! Happy new year!

(Music is, as ever, Cigarette Boat by Marc Torch!)

This week sees all three of us being extra excitable since — for the first time ever — we got to record an episode in-person! The lack of Discord delays and occasional internet outages really takes the energy up a notch, you'll no doubt be pleased to know. Since it's been the best part of a year since we were last able to get together in person, naturally the first thing we did when we were in the same room again was watch the Ace Attorney movie, which of course we have to discuss a bit before getting into today's main topic.

The prestigious Indieventure Vault is back for its third consignment of the very best indie games we know! This time the selection criteria we settled on was indie game first loves: the very first indie game that each of us can remember being swept away by, quite possibly before we even knew what indie games were in relation to the wider games industry.

Today's trio of vaultworthy games have the common factor of having been released in the span of less than a year between 2012-2013. Was this when indie games suddenly became more readily accessible thanks to the rise of digital storefronts? Or is this just a stark reminder that we're all now firmly in our early 30s? You decide as we each make our cases for the first indie game we ever fell in love with: Journey, the minimalist desert exploration adventure about coming to terms with impermanence (Rebecca); Hotline Miami, the maximalist introspection on ultraviolence as entertainment (Liam); and Proteus, the minimalist deserted island exploration walking sim about impermanence and introspection (Rachel).

Liam also (jokingly, we think?!) suggests inducting Peggle into the Vault, which nearly leads to Rachel committing a hate crime.

Moving on to hyperfixations! Rachel has been playing cute airborne exploration sim slash critter collection game Flock, which has easily cracked her already oversubscribed GOTY contenders list for 2024. Rebecca documents the recent significant moment in her long-term hyperfixation on Danganronpa when she finally finished the series' massive main story arc. And Liam has bought himself an unpronounceable retro handheld game console, which is double the fun because he gets to figure out how to get all his old games working on there and then actually play them again!

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Time for one more bit of silly fun before we settle down to the serious business of 2024 GOTY picks? We certainly think so, as in this week's Indieventure episode, we're doing an indie game draft! That's right, three people who clearly know nothing about sports have nevertheless kitbashed the idea of fantasy football together with something we're actually interested in, and have designed our dream indie gaming consoles following a curious set of rules that Liam explains very well in the episode and so I won't repeat here, even though I do remember and understand them, honest.

Due to the dramatic and intense nature of the game we're playing today, characterised as it is by shocking betrayals and twists nobody could ever see coming, I'm going to strongly recommend you don't read the show notes until you've listened to the episode. Does anyone even actually do that? Well, here's your chance to go in without spoilers.

Seriously, go listen.

Are you back?

OK, good.

So, since you've heard it now, you know that you, dear listener, have a chance to vote in our poll to determine the winner of the inaugural Indieventure draft slash console sales pitch! We'll have a poll up on socials for a week after the episode goes live because that's all Xitter will allow; but if you still want to take part after that, you can do so over at our lovely and still almost-brand-new Indieventure Discord, where the poll will be live for a whole fortnight and where you can also chat with some really cool and nice fellow listeners.

As a reminder, then, the final console drafts were as follows:

• The MegaWatt Voyager, pitched by Rachel, and containing Paradise Killer, Kentucky Route Zero, Vampire Survivors, Hades, Cult of the Lamb, Hollow Knight, Loop Hero, Disco Elysium, Minecraft, and Undertale
• The Empathy Machine, pitched by Rebecca, which includes Heaven's Vault, Firewatch, Stardew Valley, Project Zomboid, Untitled Goose Game, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Wedding Witch, Dredge, PowerWash Simulator, and Strange Horticulture
• The Indiescovery, not confusingly at all pitched by Liam, pre-loaded with Return of the Obra Dinn, What Remains of Edith Finch, Balatro, Rimworld, Deep Rock Galactic, Hotline Miami, Slay the Spire, Journey, Satisfactory, and Hypnospace Outlaw

It's all down to you now, listeners, to let us know whose dream machine you think has the best launch line-up and/or who made the most compelling case for their pitch! The poll is open for two weeks, so I'm sure we'll be reacting to the results in a couple of episodes' time.

Now, we had so much fun recording this episode that two hours just flew by before we knew it, and so we've elected to skip What We've Been Playing this week because frankly if you've made it this far into all the madness then you've probably listened to us natter enough.

That being said, it wouldn't be an episode of Indieventure without a quick run-down of our current hyperfixations, so hang around for just a few extra minutes if you want to hear us enthuse about the TV series Agatha All Along (Rebecca), the novel Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (Liam), and the recently-released indie game Neva (Rachel).

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don't forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

The Indieventure crew are back and, once again, everyone's a little bit fried. But like, really out of it this time. The vibes reach a new level of unhinged as we attempt to corral ourselves into a semi-sensible discussion of just a few of the many, many lovely indie games demoed at this month's Steam Next Fest: the thrice-annual celebration of mostly-indie games that aren't quite out yet, but are ready for you to take a good look at.

After a quick detour to reminisce about our recent group foray into multiplayer sci-fi horror game Lethal Company, we go in-depth on some of the best things we've played this Next Fest, including Devolver Digital's newly-announced Children of the Sun, as well as Echo Point Nova, Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure, Dead Pets Unleashed, Harold Halibut, Balatro, Roman Sands RE:Build, and Touchstarved. (Rebecca also cheats and wedges in extra shout-outs to Summerhouse and Copycat because she really shouldn't have been handed the keys for this episode.)

This week in hyperfixations, Rebecca wants to put in a good word for gay foodie love story Omurice Next Time, recently released on Steam, itch.io, and GOG. Liam tries to starve the oxygen from his twin obsessions with Stardew Valley and Palworld by listening to the latest album by experimental pop duo Let's Eat Grandma and reading independent gaming blog Aftermath. And Rachel has been watching drag queen and Sims YouTuber Juno Birch revisit the best game in the franchise (The Sims 2, don't @ us) to creatively torture some Sims.

Finally, we also just want to say a big thank-you to everyone who's rated and reviewed our podcast so far! The amount of support and positivity we've received has been super heartwarming and we're very grateful to all of our lovely listeners. For next time, if you have any questions you'd like us to answer, please do drop us an email or a message on socials, as we're planning a listener mailbag episode in the not-too-distant future.

It’s episode 2 of Indieventure! This week the gang chat about their most-anticipated indies set to release at the end of 2023 and - thanks to October’s Steam Next Fest - some upcoming 2024 picks too.

This episode features Underground Blossom, Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue, Little Goody Two Shoes, SteamWorld Build, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, 1000xResist, and Another Crab’s Treasure.

Hyperfixations:  The Odyssey by Lara Williams, Castlevania: Nocturne, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Alice in Borderland.

 Music is Cigarette Boat by Marc Torch.

There are two groups of people who agree that the year really ends in April: finance nerds, and gaming award show nerds. No points for guessing which the Indieventure crew belong to as we deep dive into our impressions on awards season now that 2023 is officially done and dusted with the conclusion of the BAFTA Game Awards! Expect some spirited discussions of the indie greats of last year including Viewfinder, Venba, Chants of Sennaar, Tchia, Jusant, Goodbye Volcano High, and many many more, as well as the obligatory sidetracks into Baldur's Gate 3 chat and of course, Dave the Diver.

But that's not all! We three are never ones to allow some remote authority to dictate our discussions, which is why each of us has brought along a game that we'd like to belatedly add to our own 2023 GOTY list! It's an eclectic bunch, as Liam submits Trepang2 — a retro FPS published last summer by Team 17 that the other two somehow never even heard of, let alone expected Liam to pick for this. Rachel goes rogue by choosing Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, a game commissioned and published by Square Enix (and therefore about as indie as Dave the Diver) but which strangely released with so little marketing that we've decided it falls within our remit of informing you about great games you might otherwise miss. Rebecca has finally played The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, and fully agrees with Rachel's assessment back in December that it belongs on our 2023 GOTY list, tardily elevating it to a respectable second podium behind our jointly-agreed-upon favourite, Dredge.

We end, as always, with our hyperfixations! Rachel recently saw actual play troupe Dimension 20 live in London, and thinks that to be honest this might be her thing for a good long while. Liam has got back into Fallout 4 — not because of the TV show and actively in spite of the dodgy new-gen upgrade, but just because he felt like it, which is a very Liam way of going about things. Finally, Rebecca is back on the Rusty Lake train, thanks in part to our recent episode on single-sitting indie games leading to her getting her whole family hooked on the series.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.

It's Indieventure Episode 4, and this week we're doing things a little bit differently and having a freeform chat about how we measure success when it comes to indie games. Traditional success in the gaming space is, of course, financial: games that are a commercial hit and sell loads and loads of copies. But we also consider other factors, such as positive critical reception and the growth of a dedicated fanbase even in the absence of breakthroughs in term of money, fame, and accolades; meeting a dev's personal goals for the project enough to allow them to invest in creating future games; and games that launch quietly only to enjoy slow-burn success over the long-term (we're looking at you, Among Us).

We also take a quick dive into what we've been playing recently: Rachel's been building communities after the end of the world as we know it in Saltsea Chronicles; Rebecca's falling in love with an evil princess — yet again — in Slay The Princess; while Liam's time with Spin Rhythm XD has him not only reliving the glory days of Guitar Hero and DDR but wondering whether it's surpassed them both.

Meanwhile, the tech gremlins have invaded for the second episode in a row, so our apologies that Rebecca occasionally sounds like a robot this time! Her microphone's a bit broken but she hasn't been replaced by an extremely realistic AI, we promise; no machine could simulate just how fast she talks when she's getting excited about her nerd stuff.

Speaking of which, this episode's hyperfixations are all spooky indie games, it turns out! So stay tuned for some bonus geeking over the recent remake of Sherlock Holmes The Awakened, queer horror visual novel Mediterranea Inferno, and ultra-nostalgic zombie horror You Will Die Here Tonight.

Music is Cigarette Boat by Marc Torch.

Music is undeniably a huge part of what makes video games special, both individually and on an industry-wide level. Not only is no gaming award show complete without a gong for the year's best soundtrack, but even the Proms have started acknowledging that video game scores have come a long way since the 8-bit days (without throwing any shade on chiptune, a legitimate genre in and of itself with some stone-cold classics). That's probably why, from huge AAAs to smaller indies, music can account for a significant chunk of any game's budget — and it's definitely worth the investment.

For this episode, the Indieventure trio have pooled our vinyl collection to talk about some of our personal favourite indie game music highlights. I know you guys say you love long show notes but there's seriously no way I'm going to be able to list every track we talk about here — which is why we've put together [a YouTube playlist] that should cover everything instead! A quick overview, though, sees us talking about the music from games including Balatro, Bombrush Cyberfunk, Braid, Celeste, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dear Esther, Death's Door, Dicey Dungeons, Disco Elysium, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Fields of Mistria, Firewatch, Hades, Hades II, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Hollow Knight, Hotline Miami, Hypnospace Outlaw, Journey, Kentucky Route Zero, Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp, Minecraft, No Straight Roads, Paradise Killer, Pizza Tower, Pyre, Return of the Obra Dinn, Stardew Valley, A Tower Full of Cats, Trombone Champ, Undertale, Unravel, and We Happy Few.

If you'd like to hear every track we discuss in this episode in its entirety, we've added them all to a convenient YouTube playlist that you can find here.

During the course of this chat we also promise you a couple of specific links, so go here for Bombrush Cyberfunk soundtrack memes, and here for one of the Ace Attorney x Danganronpa musical mashup channels on YouTube that Rebecca (and now Rachel too) is so very fond of.   Finally, as ever, are our current hyperfixations! Rebecca has discovered an accidentally awesome double-bill of horror novels with a timely social message in Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays and Grady Hendrix's The Final Girl Support Group; Liam's been having a whimsical time in recently-released indie platformer The Plucky Squire; and Rachel is having a moment with girly pop in general, and Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter in particular, thanks to the recent VMAs award show.   Our music, meanwhile, was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

Christmas is almost upon us, and before we ring in the New Year with our GOTY picks, it's time for us here at the Indieventure podcast to pour ourselves a generous glug of mulled wine and reflect on the year as a whole as it pertains to indie games.

Has it been a good year for indies? How did it stack up against previous years – especially the wall-to-wall hit machine that was 2023? And, putting personal preferences aside (because we'll be digging into that in-depth in our next episode, don't worry) what have been the biggest indie games of the year?

Naturally expect Balatro, 1000xRESIST, Hades 2, and Pacific Drive to get a lot of airtime in this one, as well as Silksong (still conspicuous in its absence as we head into 2025). We also look back over our most-anticipated games from the start of the year, checking in with what came out, what got delayed, and what landed unexpectedly (or not) from a list that included Anger Foot, Creepshow, Crow Country, Demonschool, Europa, Loco Motive, Lost Records, The Mermaid Mask (née The Mermaid's Tongue), Rise of the Golden Idol, Sucker for Love 2, Synergy, Thank Goodness You're Here!, and Tiny Bookshop.

And then – just in case you thought we were going to be if anything a bit too sensible in this one – an old friend returns to deliver a self-indulgent quiz! There's really no point in outlining the premise here, just trust us when we say that it has to be heard to be believed.

We end, as always, with our current hyperfixations! Rebecca has been defying gravity thanks to the Wicked movie, Rachel has been reading a stack of queer fiction (specifically Julia Armfield's Salt Slow, Eliza Clark's She's Always Hungry and Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch), while Liam has turned his attention to the skies - and the places it leads - with Mark Vanhoenacker's Imagine A City.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

Happy New Year, Indieventurers! It's 2025 and there are so many flavours of existential dread tied up in that particular statement that we have no choice but to distract ourselves for at least a couple of hours a day with lovely video games – or (we hope you make this choice, at least) with podcasts about video games!

While there's a lot of uncertainty ahead, one thing we can be reasonably sure of is that there are some absolute bangers due to make their debut on the indie gaming scene this year – although as ever, we 100% support devs who put their own wellbeing first, which is why there's absolutely no hard feelings if any of the games on this list get pushed into 2026 and beyond. Settle in as we rhapsodise on the upcoming merits of Blue Prince, Citizen Sleeper 2, Demonschool, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, Metropolis 1998, Monster Prom 4: Monster Con, Morsels, Paralives (complete with bonus chat about fellow upcoming indie life sims Vivaland and Alterlife), Promise Mascot Agency, Skate Story, Strange Antiquities, Streets of Rogue 2, Tiny Bookshop, and Wanderstop.

Because it's our first episode after our long Christmas break, everyone brought along a double helping of hyperfixations this week! Rebecca recommends going into zombie horror-comedy movie One Cut of the Dead knowing as little as possible, and going into Waterstone's book of the year Butter by Asako Yuzuki knowing a bit more than what's printed on the cover. Rachel is, naturally, hooked on The Traitors Season 3 (but not The Traitors Australia Season 2, thankyouverymuch) and the second season of Severance. Liam recommends checking out indie rocker Blondshell if you haven't already, and also thinks that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle might be the greatest triple-A game in years – which draws out a surprising consensus across the whole group.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

Wow, how are we halfway through 2024 already?! No need to point out that we're actually closer to 60% of the way through the year by the time this episode is released; better late than never! Yep, it's time for our GOTFHOTY nominations, also known as Games Of The First Half Of The Year, but Rebecca is very proud of having potentially originated an acronym that could totally enter common parlance if people were just willing to give it a chance.

Not quite as formal as our totally scientific Christmas GOTY list, GOTFHOTYs are when we name a bunch of games we can see ending up making our respective top fives depending on what happens between July and December. Rachel's been playing a bunch of great indies and so has already got a few good ideas as to what her end-of-year-list will look like, suggesting that Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, 1000xRESIST, Animal Well, and the newly-released Dungeons of Hinterberg are all up there at the moment. Liam gives nods to Balatro and Crow Country, of course, but Minishoot' Adventures makes for a surprise new frontrunner for him. Rebecca's had a much slower start to her year in terms of GOTY candidates, but has so far been most impressed by Little Kitty, Big City and Cryptmaster.

We couldn't very well call it a proper mid-year check-in if we didn't also look forward to what the Q3/Q4 release schedule is looking like, and so in this episode's second half we collectively rattle off a few games we're excited to hopefully play before the year's out. We can't say for sure yet how we'll feel about the full games, of course, and who knows what surprise releases will turn our heads this autumn? But as it stands, we reckon that Flock, Cataclismo, The Crush House, Demonschool, Phoenix Springs, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Sorry We're Closed, and Dreamsettler have the best odds of upsetting the current rankings.

Much like the midpoint of the year, hyperfixations roll round much quicker than you'd expect. Bafflingly, Rachel has never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer before, but now she's bingeing the show for the first time, which allows Liam and Rebecca to conduct some fascinating research on the only remaining millennial geek not to know this franchise inside-out. Liam has been watching Couples Therapy, a TV documentary series that is decidedly not a reality TV show, thank goodness. Rebecca's been swept up by her day-job hype for Zenless Zone Zero, but was also very excited for the new Hildegard von Blingin' song that dropped just a few hours before recording. Somehow, this turns into a friendly disagreement between her and Liam about whether Fall Out Boy's 2023 modernised cover of We Didn't Start the Fire was good or cringe. (But since Rebecca writes the episode descriptions, allow me to abuse my privilege to set the record straight: it's both. We're both right.)

Finally, for all you folks who love a full and proper account of every game we mention in an episode even when it's not connected to the main topic, know that our GOTFHOTY discussion and mid-year check-in also wanders into the territories of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, Baldur's Gate 3, Boyfriend Dungeon, Harold Halibut, The Last of Us Parts I&II, Loco Motive, Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4, Steamworld Heist 2, Thank Goodness You're Here!, and Tiny Life.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Happy Pride Month, Indieventurers! Regular listeners to this 100% LGBTQIA+-fronted podcast will know that we're not exactly quietly closeted for the other 11 months of the year, but this June we've elected to challenge ourselves to make an episode that is our gayest yet. This takes the format of an open-ended chat where we discuss everything from our favourite queer characters and stories in indie games, to some maybe less-than-flawless examples of queer representation (be it explicit or just heavily implied) that we still love, to games that maybe don't have any reference to gender or sexuality at all but which still have such gay energy you'd swear they were developed exclusively by drag queens.

We also chat a bit about our early memories as queer gamers in the '90s and '00s, and naturally the conversation occasionally veers into favourite AAA franchises that make at least a bit of an effort to be inclusive, even though indie games are definitely where it's at for this topic. Oh, and of course we couldn't let the opportunity pass us by to talk a little bit about our favourite gay lawyers and just what exactly makes the Ace Attorney franchise so very blatantly queer despite technically having no properly out characters.

Fans of our rapid-fire conversational shifts are about to eat well as this episode takes us on a whistle-stop tour through literally dozens of our favourite queer-themed, queer-developed, and/or queer-coded games and franchises, including: Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Doki Doki Literature Club!, Fashion Police Squad, Frog Detective, Gone Home, Goodbye Volcano High, If Found…, In Stars & Time, The Last Express, The Last of Us, Life is Strange, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, Mediterranea Inferno, The Missing: J.J. Macfield & the Island of Memories, Paradise Killer, Paralives, Resident Evil 3 (no, really!), The Sims, Simulacra, Slime Rancher, Sucker for Love: Date to Die For, Telltale's The Walking Dead, Thomas Was Alone, Tiny Life, Unpacking, Videoverse, and A Year of Springs.

In this episode's hyperfixations, Liam is fascinated by the concept of building your own internet away from the dubious influences of corporate social media, and recommends checking out sites like Thinky Games and McMansion Hell if you want a return to the good old days of reading about strangers' niche interests in their own personal style of communicating. (Pssst, you should also check out sevenoutoften.co.uk and indieventurepodcast.co.uk if you want to see some sites that Liam has quite literally built himself!) Meanwhile, Rebecca has been reminded of the important work Devcats always do in keeping her mental health in check during stressful times, as she's been navigating a pile-up of life events with the help of their most recent hidden object game, A Tower Full of Cats. Finally, Rachel took our own advice from the last episode and played Crow Country in Exploration mode, and has been very happy with the result.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Like it or not, 2024 is almost over, and Indieventure is closing out the year with a trilogy of episodes looking back on our recent experiences of the games industry. We're saving the more targeted analysis of the year in games and of course our big GOTY reveal for the two episodes due out in December, but today we're starting out with a more general question: how has working in games media impacted our experiences of gaming as a hobby?

What starts out as a light-hearted "day in the life of a games journalist" chat quickly turns into a group therapy session where we go into a fairly serious examination of the realities of working in games media in the 2020s, both good and bad. This is less a chat about specific games and more an overview of games media trends both visible and invisible to the audience, so if you've ever wanted to hear some inside baseball delivered from the Indieventure trio's perspective, here's your chance. We promise the mood gets lighter over the rest of the holiday season episodes, but we're glad we got all this off our chests!

This episode also includes our final pre-GOTY "what we've been playing" round-up, in which Rachel gives a spoiler-free overview of Rise of the Golden Idol; Rebecca catches up on the long-awaited full release of Phoenix Springs; and despite spending much of the past month on another continent, Liam has somehow put another 10 hours into Factorio following the launch of the Space Age expansion.

Last but not least, our hyperfixations for this episode see Liam geeking out over the Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary, Rebecca enjoying "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" by TJ Klune (the sequel to a Season Zero hyperfixation, "The House in the Cerulean Sea"), and Rachel discovering an amazing TV channel called Mech+ which appears to only show reruns of Robot Wars and it turns out we're all very here for that.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don't forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

As 2024 draws to an end, the Indieventure trio return to discuss their favourite indie games of the last 12 months. That's right, folks, it's time for our annual Game Of The Year episode!

We won't spoil which games we chat about here in the description (you can find that over on our website if you're the type of person who hunts around the house looking for their Christmas presents in mid-November like a wrong 'un) but what we can say is that although we each brought along a personal list of our five favourites, we only ended up discussing 13 due to a couple of overlaps.

As always we end with our hyperfixations. Liam's been playing the MySims-inspired city builder Go-Go Town! Rebecca has been rethinking her relationship with attention, and is doing something every day that makes her happy (we have no choice but to stan). Meanwhile, Rachel was put on the spot and decided to dream about the upcoming (when we recorded, anyway) open-world fashion adventure Infinity Nikki.

A reminder! After this episode, we're taking a short break to drink a few buckets of gravy and have a nice long nap, but we'll be back on the 23rd of January 2025 with our usual nonsense. Thanks once again for all your support this year, we hope you have a lovely Christmas, happy holidays, or a peaceful winter break!

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget that you can join our dedicated Discord too!

 

The UK is enjoying its annual two weeks of good weather and so the Indieventure crew have decided to get together and plan an indie game (well, indie-led) summer holiday! That's right, it's another list episode, featuring a whistlestop tour of some of the greatest vacation destinations in video games according to, as it turns out, three potentially nightmarish travel companions.

Our dream trip turns out to include stops in: Abzu, Anemoiapolis, Animal Crossing: Wild World, BioShock, Book of Travels, Botany Manor, The Coin Game, Danganronpa 2, Dishonored 2, Doomsday Paradise, Dorfromantik, En Garde!, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Final Fantasy VII, Firewatch, Five Nights at Freddy's, The Good Life, Half-Life, A Highland Song, Hooked On You, Huniepop 2, The Last of Us, The Legend of Zelda, Let's Build A Zoo, Overboard, Paradise Killer, Parkasaurus, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, Pokémon Crystal, The Quarry, Resident Evil, Roman Sands RE:Build, A Short Hike, Star Birds, Stardew Valley, Strange Horticulture, Thank Goodness You're Here, Thimbleweed Park, Until Dawn, and The Witness.

In hyperfixations, Rachel has again turned her attention to tabletop gaming and has been greatly enjoying Spots, a card game where you roll dice and apply their dots to a variety of cute dalmatians. Liam has been playing Destiny 2: The Final Shape, reminding him once again that he actually really likes Destiny 2 sorry-not-sorry. Rebecca has been very busy but nevertheless the announcement of Life is Strange: Double Exposure is giving her life.

(Note: We had to record this episode further in advance than usual, which is why you won't hear anyone getting excited about the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection — don't be alarmed, normal service will undoubtedly resume in the next episode.)

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

In the third episode of the Indieventure podcast, the gang are all about those autumnal vibes, picking out some of our favourite indie games that are more cosy than sipping pumpkin spice latte dressed in a chunky knit sweater while kicking through fallen leaf piles in the park, or whatever.

In fact, the autumn air was so crisp when we recorded this that it got right into Rachel's microphone and made her audio a bit, erm, crispy. Which is my clever(?) way of saying sorry for some minor technical difficulties in this one! Don't worry, though, the whole episode is perfectly audible; you won't miss a second of our signature top-tier Muppet fashion chat. Oh, and we also talk about indie games, you can hear that too!

Our featured games this week are Cultic, Wytchwood, Beacon Pines, Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery, and the collected works of Rusty Lake and Madison Karrh.

This week's hyperfixations are Cyberpunk 2077, The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix, and an impulsive decision to learn some basic Japanese using Duolingo.

Music is Cigarette Boat by Marc Torch.

The last quarter of 2024 is somehow already upon us, and while it's definitely too early to be putting up the Christmas decorations (bombastically side-eyeing my local pub there), it is the time of year when many of us stop buying so much stuff for ourselves so we can write wish lists, and/or start saving up our hobby money to spend on the people we love instead. Which makes this a totally seasonally appropriate episode and not an excuse for Rebecca to launch a thorough examination into one of her many special interests: free-to-play games.

The free-to-play model has quite a few negative connotations associated with it, not entirely unfairly; but the Indieventure gang are here to make the case that to dismiss all F2P titles is to ignore the wide range of what's on offer in the space, especially amongst indie games. To that end, prepare for a big old chat about our favourite free indies, including Battle For Polytopia; Butterfly Soup; Doki Doki Literature Club; If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers; Indigo Park; Interview with the Whisperer; Lily's Well; Marie's Room; Max Gentlemen; Our Life: Beginnings & Always; Pineapple On Pizza; Samsara Room (by Rusty Lake); Simulacra: Pipe Dreams; Slice and Dice; Start Again: A Prologue (prototype prequel to In Stars & Time and not technically free it turns out, but very cheap and just generally germane to the conversation); South Scrimshaw; Sucker for Love: Prelude; Supermarket Simulator: Prologue; and the mobile port of Vampire Survivors.

Two things of note here: one, this is maybe the first time we've dedicated significant podcast chat to the subject of indie mobile games specifically; and two, everyone who feels like we're constantly trying to bankrupt them with wishlistable titles, rejoice! This episode doesn't need to cost you a penny.

Unless, that is, you decide to keep listening to our new temporary segment! With GOTY voting rapidly approaching, we've decided that it's not enough to check in with what we've all been playing every couple of months, and instead we're going to start updating you on all the cool stuff we've been checking out in every episode. Rachel and Liam have both had their professional reviewer hats on to check out The Plucky Squire and Shogun Showdown, respectively; while Rebecca — fashionably late after several months dedicated to playing hefty AAA games for her day job — has finally arrived at Thank Goodness You're Here, which turns out to be brilliant! Who knew?!

As ever, we end on hyperfixations — and would you believe it, we've all been playing some video games? Rebecca has finally completed her three-year-long mission to play all 10 visual novels in that iconic series about gay lawyers, having just wrapped up the recently-released Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. Liam keeps the Capcom hype train chugging along with his love for another of their latest game preservation projects, the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. And you'll be pleased to know that we're all being very on-brand, because Rachel has been playing Frostpunk 2, which may be one of the very few city building simulators out there to actually narratively justify getting a sequel.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Happy New Year to all our lovely listeners! Whether you've been with us since the old days of [REDACTED PODCAST] or are joining us for the first time today, we hope you'll be adding plenty of new recommendations to your wishlist over the course of this episode, where we discuss our most-anticipated new indies coming up in 2024.

First though, a quick chat about what we all played over our Christmas break. Rachel's been enjoying eco-fiction visual novel South Scrimshaw, Part One; Rebecca was pleasantly surprised by 2023's latest video game adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express; and Liam may have finally found his true simulated calling in House Flipper 2.

Onto our most anticipated indies of the year, and we're keen to highlight a few games in particular. Settle in as we extol the upcoming virtues of 1000xRESIST, Demonschool, The Mermaid's Tongue, Pacific Drive, Sucker For Love: Date To Die For, Thank Goodness You're Here!, and Tiny Bookshop.

But obviously, there's way more than just those seven indie and AA titles on the horizon that we're excited for. Our particular honourable mentions go to Anger Foot, Creepshow, Crow Country, Europa, Loco Motive, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, Rise of the Golden Idol, and Synergy. And given how much angsting we went through to narrow it down even that far, we're pretty confident that we're going to have plenty to talk about throughout 2024.

This week's hyperfixations are The Traitors: Series 2, Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways DLC, and DC's Harley Quinn adult animated series. (We'll leave you to guess whose is whose, since long-time listeners will probably be able to puzzle it out.)

Music is Cigarette Boat by Marc Torch.

And as always, thank you for listening!

Little known fact about the Indieventure crew: we're all pretty tiny. Like, 5'9" at the outside, the types who really need a tall friend to accompany us to the supermarket so we can reach the interesting condiment jars that always seem to be hanging out on the top shelf. So, short queens/king that we are, of course we stan a short indie game. How could we not? Just like us, they're perfect the way they are, taking up exactly as much space as they need to make their point without feeling the need to be all imposing (on your precious free time).

Moving on from that metaphor before the thread gets lost entirely! We've separated this episode into time-based categories, starting with indies that take two or three hours to complete, including Anemoiapolis, Birth, Industria, Lily's Well, Nuts, Penko Park, Pupperazzi, A Short Hike, Umurangi Generation, and A Year of Springs; as well as various games in the Devcats and Rusty Lake franchises.

Next up are some of our favourite one-hour indies, like Chop Goblins, The Exit 8, and Morph Girl, as well as the individual games that make up the Frog Detective trilogy; Rusty Lake's sister series Cube Escape; and the early works of solo Birth dev Madison Karrh.

Squeezing our way down to indies in 30 minutes or less or your pizza's free (disclaimer: I do not actually have the authority to grant you a free pizza, sorry), it turns out we've got a surprising number of recommendations to offer in this particular bracket. We urge anyone who fancies playing a game from start to finish over their lunch break to check out David Lynch Teaches Typing; Dr Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald; Localhost; Pebble Witch; Pet the Pup at the Party; Pineapple on Pizza; Puzmo; Teenage Blob; or any of Deconstructeam's short offerings on Itch, with a special mention going to Eternal Home Floristry if you're too overwhelmed by choice to know where to start.

Finally, if you're looking for a miniscule indie game that can be played in just 5 minutes or so, look no further than psychological horror walking sim September 1999. And if your tastes run to indies so small they can only be viewed under a microscope, we end by recommending Morning Makeup Madness and Queers in Love at the End of the World, both of which last just 10 seconds.

Before we're done, though, there's time to have a quick chat about longer indie games nevertheless handily divisible into single-sitting runs, including Balatro, Deep Rock Survivor, Slay the Princess, Vampire Survivors, and (of course) the Monster Prom games.

We end, as ever, with our latest round of hyperfixations! It's a broad category this episode, which sees Rachel bingeing all three seasons of Netflix's adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events; Rebecca hooked on the recently-released fantasy/mystery novel "Voyage of the Damned" by debut author Frances White; and Liam discovering that YouTuber City Planner Plays is every bit as good as Bob Ross for some educational ASMR.

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.

This episode of Indieventure Extra is a long-awaited reunion between Liam and Ed Thorn, reviews editor at PC-focused website Rock Paper Shotgun (we've never heard of it).

Ed discusses his history with games, how he became a games journalist and the challenges of balancing indie game coverage alongside more financially stable AAA content. The pair also chat about what makes a good video game review, Ed reveals his favourite indie from 2024, and there is a 5-minute section where the phrase "Beast Mode" is uttered about 45 times. It makes sense in context. Sort of.

You can find Ed's good words over at Rock Paper Shotgun.

Here are the Redfall and Sonic Frontiers videos mentioned in the episode. Inventory Space only lasted two episodes, but it's still worth a watch.

Enjoy!

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts.

It's been a while since the Indieventure crew did a group review, but here we are at last once again, this time having a proper gander at newly-released (by the time you hear this, anyway) stop-motion narrative adventure game Harold Halibut. Drawing its inspiration from mid-20th century TV — namely an unusual blend of hard sci-fi and gentle animated comedy shows — Harold Halibut proved somewhat divisive among the Indieventure trio, although we find it so hard to argue with each other even when we disagree that once again we end up negotiating a reasonable middle ground. What can I say, sometimes we're so wholesome it's sickening. But thanks to our lively exchange of ideas, there's a good chance that you'll come out with a well-informed impression of whether Harold Halibut is a game for you or not.

 

This episode also contains a mini review of Pepper Grinder, a new pixel-art 2D platformer and the latest outing for the linchpin indie publishers at Devolver Digital. Does it have cronch? Stay tuned for the verdict from our resident pinecone-munching expert.

 

And last but not least, hyperfixations! In a break from tradition, Rebecca doesn't want to talk for long about how much she's been hooked on The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood of late, because she's literally been playing it for our discussion next episode and that would defeat the point. This leaves Liam and Rachel plenty of time to swap reality TV recommendations: courtesy of Liam we have Channel 4's latest social experiment The Underdog: Josh Must Win, while Rachel presents us with South Korean game show The Devil's Plan on Netflix, which turns out to have been way better than the second season of Physical 100.

 

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.

It's Valentine's Day(ish, still, shush) and so naturally the Indieventure trio have turned our attention to… horror games! Yes, we're really on-form with our historic refusal to do normal seasonal celebration episodes, as it's recently occurred to us that it's been about a year and a half since we last did a dedicated horror deep dive. And since resident goth-at-heart Rebecca is steering the ship this week, and the only thing she craves more in games than a relatable love story is a good spookening with a side-order of existential dread, this theming makes total sense, trust us.

Since our Season Zero horror episode focussed on the stone-cold classics of the indie space, we've decided to make this episode specifically about the cool indie horror games and gaming trends that we feel have emerged in the first half of this decade. (Also, do you ever think about how the 2020s are half over already? Surely that's the scariest thing of all.) 

We've got it all covered here: liminal space horror, hidden object horror, mascot horror, retro horror, even non-horror games that borrow liberally from the horror aesthetic! Because it's love day and all naturally we touch on the up-and-coming genre that is romantic horror too, which just as naturally leads to a discussion about queer horror. There's also some chat about the indie horror developers whose work is codifying the whole scene for this decade, as well as some of the formerly-indie devs who've broken out into AA and AAA spaces thanks to their earlier work.

It's a whistlestop tour but we take in all the hits, and if there's an essential work of indie horror from the past five years you think we've missed, please do let us know – we love a good recommendation!

We end as ever with our hyperfixations, and Rachel has been watching all of the various Real Housewives series, and we mean all of them, no city has been spared as long as it has a ready supply of disgustingly filthy rich families willing to entertain and amaze reality TV aficionados with their antics. Liam is still on a roll with hunting down cool recent indie releases following our last episode, this time in the form of Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match 3 To and Rift of the Necrodancer. And Rebecca has some big feelings to share following her recently-completed first-time playthrough of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, which means she has now finally finished the whole main story of the franchise (but somehow still has a lot of supplementary materials left to go before she's really done-done).

Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!