Episode 11: It's About Time (Loops)

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.