Episodios
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Welcome, welcome to Indieventure's second-ever episode recorded in-person! Your fabulous trio of hosts recently secluded ourselves once again in a caravan in Yorkshire and this time our resulting nonsense is even more unhinged than last year's "live" episode.
What began life, several months ago, as an idea for a fairly straightforward character-led Vault episode has instead brought us here, to Indieventure's Legally Distinct 77th (you'll notice it changes a few times) Annual Indie Game Death Match Battle Royale!* Surprisingly this originally had very little to do with the fact that we're all quite into The Hunger Games and there was a new book out recently, but as you might guess it does come up.
So, what's the plan? Well, quite simply, we fed 24 characters representing 24 indie games into a Hunger Games simulator and riffed on the results. I won't list all the contestants here but suffice to say if you've ever wanted to see a touching battlefield romance develop between Big Ron and Ăbramar, know how Harold Halibut would emotionally reconcile himself with going on a killing spree once the red mist receded, or see if Tim the Terrible Boy will ever finally get what's coming to him, then I'm really glad that we've found an audience for the highly specific shared sense of humour we unleashed the day we recorded this.
The winner has the honour of having their game crowned the best indie game of all time, unless we don't like the outcome, in which case they just get bragging rights.
As a disclaimer, I just want to make it very clear that we're all highly media literate individuals who did actually read/watch and understand the point of The Hunger Games, but we also just love a bit that goes on far too long. If you want to sink to our level and try out this ridiculous concept for yourself â maybe at your next dinner party! â we used the BrantSteele Hunger Games Simulator, which also has a bunch of other franchises pre-programmed as well as letting you write in your own characters.
We may have realised halfway through that we've slightly uncomfortably aligned ourselves with the Capitol in this episode, but you know what, that only makes it even more appropriate that we end like it was any other regular week, ignoring the screams while we talk about our latest batch of hyperfixations. Rachel has been playing Promise Mascot Agency; Rebecca recently had a video game themed weekend seeing the Until Dawn movie (bad) and attending an Animal Crossing: New Horizons event at a Sea Life Centre (good); and Liam has been reading Intermezzo by Sally Rooney and Saltwater by Jessica Andrews, the latter of whom turned out to have been in his English class at school! Small world.
* No indie game characters were hurt in the making of this episode. All involvement of indie game characters was overseen by the Indieventure Association for the Ethical Treatment and Enthusiastic Promotion of Indie Game Protagonists (Except for Tim the Terrible Boy)
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. Donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too, and be sure to check out our new Steam Curator page if you simply still can't get enough of us!
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The end of April also marks the official end of the previous year's games calendar, as all of the Big 5 games industry awards shows (Golden Joysticks, The Game Awards, DICE, Game Developers' Choice, and the BAFTAs) have now been and gone. Which is useful because it means that here at Indieventure, we get to draw a line under 2024 at long last and turn our attentions firmly to the future of games released in 2025 â which, naturally, we'll be legally allowed to talk about until April 2026. It's the way of things.
But before we wave a fond farewell to a year that actually ended four months ago â and don't you dare remind us that we're totally undeniably â of the way through 2025 already â we're wrapping things up here by ceremonially rolling up the red carpet Indieventure-style. If this isn't your first trip around the sun with us, you'll know that mostly means "Rebecca gets very excited about award show stats", but this year we have some insider insight as well, since Rachel actually appeared on the BBC as part of their BAFTA Games coverage!
If industry accolades chat isn't your thing, don't worry, though, because we've also taken this opportunity to revisit some indie games from 2024 that we really wanted to cover but â mainly for reasons of there being so many of the things â didn't get around to until now. Stick around for belated chats about Anthology of the Killer, Arco, Arctic Eggs, Echo Point Nova, and Loco Motive, as well as brief swings by Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (again) and Vampire Therapist⊠plus more Blue Prince because we simply can't help ourselves.
Last but not least, this episode's batch of hyperfixations sees Rebecca trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance of falling hard for historical girl power pop opera Six: The Musical and sci-fi romance gacha game Love & Deepspace during the same two-week period; Liam confirming what we already suspected about Strange Scaffold's latest game, survival horror match-3 mashup Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 (it's really good!); and Rachel discovering that The Rehearsal: Season 2 is completely unlike The Rehearsal: Season 1 and makes for strange and compelling watching.
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. Donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too, and be sure to check out our new Steam Curator page if you simply still can't get enough of us!
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¿Faltan episodios?
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Not to get too big-headed or anything, but I think it's fair to say that here at Indieventure we knew about Blue Prince before almost anyone. The demo that sparked obsessions in both Rachel and Rebecca over the past few months has now transformed into 2025's most highly-rated game release so far, garnering early GOTY predictions not just within the indie space, but even when compared to this year's roster of Triple-As (which let's be honest, is so far pretty muted due to everyone and their mum being afraid of launching up against GTA6).
So, naturally, we're dedicating this episode to Blue Prince now that it's out. And once again, we have a minority report situation on our hands, because while Rebecca and Rachel remain captivated, Liam has some thoughts that go against the general consensus on this game. But it's us, so of course we have a kind and respectful discussion that only goes off the rails through incidental chatter.
There's only so much you can say about a game that's really best encountered with minimal spoilers, though, so we use Blue Prince as a jumping-off point to talk about houses in games generally. It sounds straightforward enough, but when you stop to think about it, a quite staggering number of video games touch on domestic spaces â for everything from humanising characters who might otherwise be difficult to identify with, to creating a sense of dread as the familiar turns sinister.
We talk about a lot of games â including quite a few illegal AAAs who provide some vital context for the discussion â but for those of you who like to keep track, the indie game houses we touch on here include the essentials like the ones found in Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch, as well as The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, The Crush House, Devotion, Go-Go Town, Layers of Fear, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Lost Records, Mouthwashing, PowerWash Simulator, The Room, Rusty Lake, Stardew Valley, Sucker for Love, Tangle Tower, Thank Goodness You're Here, Unpacking, and Visage.
As always and ever, we end on our current hyperfixations. Liam has been playing Promise Mascot Agency â which launched on the same day as Blue Prince and will surely be coming up on the pod again â and has been as delighted by it as you'd expect the person who inducted Paradise Killer into the vault to be with its long-anticipated follow-up. Rebecca has been reading Elphie: A Wicked Childhood, the latest book by Gregory Maguire that staunchly refuses to make concessions to the stage/film version of Wicked compared to the much weirder original novel series that she's loved for decades. And while it's maybe not her usual genre, Rachel has been surprised to find herself really, really enjoying newly-released tower defense RTS Cataclismo.
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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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I don't want to alarm anyone, but the 2020s are already half over. This horrific revelation doesn't have many upsides, but one of them is surely the fact that â with five years of this rotten decade under our belts â we can start to think a little bit about the current shape of the gaming landscape, and how it'll be remembered when we inevitably arbitrarily lump it all together in another five years' time.
OK, turns out that wasn't such a cheerful conversation either, but you know what is a place of loveliness and positivity? The Indieventure Vault. Yes, that's right, today we're once again opening the blast-proof doors to go over our very favourite indie games of the first half of the 2020s, at the end of which each of us selects our own #1 pick to rest safe in the Vault forever.
The list we come up with is as eclectic as you'd expect, featuring as it does a blend of personal favourites and acclaimed best-ofs including Among Us, Boyfriend Dungeon, Citizen Sleeper, Cocoon, Death's Door, Immortality, Max Gentlemen Sexy Business, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, Thank Goodness You're Here, Umurangi Generation, and Vampire Survivors. But only three from that shortlist can be submitted into the prestigious Indieventure Vault. Who will it be?
(Insert reality-TV-coded pause.)
I mean, come on, obviously you're going to have to listen to find out, I'm not going to give the big reveal away just like that.
We end as always on our hyperfixations, and in what may actually be a podcast first, we're all about video games in our free time right now! Rebecca's new favourite is still under embargo, so all she can really say at the moment is that she's really been enjoying Blue Prince (check back next episode for more on that!). Liam sings the praises of the wonderful co-op playground that is Split Fiction while also taking the auteur to task for the many, many issues he has with the plot of Split Fiction. And Rachel loves Two Point Museum, because as we all know she's a lady of impeccable taste and it's simply great.
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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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Sakes alive, we're 35, and in this episode we've been inspired by the recent release of Wanderstop to turn our attention to the nebulous topic of cosy games. Is "cosy" a genre? A theme? A vibe? Are all cosy games broadly the same, or is it just a blanket term that can refer to any game without a central combat mechanic? Is "cosy" even still a valid classification now that we've moved so far past all major new titles being, essentially, Doom with a different paint job?
All these questions and more will be debated enthusiastically by the Indieventure trio, even if we entirely lack the ability to form a consensus that provides you with definitive answers. What we can manage, however, is to rattle off a bunch of cosy game recommendations, drawing from personal favourites and cosy classics (and indeed both) to come up with a list that encompasses indie titles as disparate as Stardew Valley (naturally), Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Dorfromantik, Dungeons of Hinterberg, the Frog Detective trilogy, House Flipper 2, Lil' Gator Game, Ooblets, PowerWash Simulator, Proteus, Tangle Tower, Tiny Life, TOEM, Wilmot Works It Out, and Frostpunk (no, really!).
We also have a crack at an informal group review of Wanderstop, which has elicited an impressive array of thoughts and opinions among a trio of people who normally tend to kind of agree on most things. Who thought what? You'll have to listen to find out, but I can reveal it's a good chat. (And if you haven't yet listened to the recent Indieventure Extra episode where Liam interviews creators Davey Wreden and Karla Zimonja, here's the link to that!)
Finally, as always, we end with our current hyperfixations. Liam is still absolutely caning through an essential catalogue of new and recent game releases, and has this time turned his attention to Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest in Capcom's long-running series about invading the habitats of majestic creatures and turning their hides into some fancy pants. Rebecca is trying to live by Wanderstop's example and be kinder to herself, which mainly involves taking a lot of naps at the moment, but she also throws in a couple of bonus recommendations for anti-burnout narratives in the form of Travis Baldree's high fantasy coffee shop novel Legends & Lattes, and of course the evergreen Pokémon Concierge miniseries. And Rachel's circled back to Mindhack, a dystopian visual novel about neutralising enemies of the state with beautiful electronic flowers that painfully rewire their dissident thoughts. You might remember this one from a couple of years ago, and it's good to see it still steadily making its way through early access, and now including four chapters of a planned eight-slash-nine.
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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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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.
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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 â 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 â between Life is Strange die-hard Rebecca, Life is Strange enjoyer Rachel, and Life is Strange novice Liam â 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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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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.
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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 â 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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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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 â 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 â of course â 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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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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 â 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 â 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 â 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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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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.
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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 donât forget that you can join our dedicated Discord too!
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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 â 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 â just in case you thought we were going to be if anything a bit too sensible in this one â 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 donât forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!
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Itâs time for another Indieventure EXTRA, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry.
Weâre 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 heâs the perfect person to discuss this topic with. Have a listen if youâd like to hear us both take a trip down memory lane and have a gab about Sonyâs 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.
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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!
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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 UndertaleThe 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 HorticultureThe 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 OutlawIt'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!
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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!
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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 â 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.
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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 â fashionably late after several months dedicated to playing hefty AAA games for her day job â has finally arrived at Thank Goodness You're Here, which turns out to be brilliant! Who knew?!
As ever, we end on hyperfixations â 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.
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