Indieventure

Long-time listeners or observant newcomers will already know that Indiventure is a fortnightly podcast, which comes with its own benefits and drawbacks. One major plus is that it allows us to keep making this show as an extracurricular hobby without getting burned out; but the downsides include sometimes not being especially timely with our topic, if the latest big release happened to drop during our week off.   Knowing that, due to the quirks of our schedule, we'd be recording this a few days before the Switch 2 launched but releasing a week after, we decided to lean all-in to that lack of timeliness and dedicate this episode to a discussion of the Nintendo Switch. Like, the original one, that you've been able to get your hands on since 2017. Talk about keeping a finger on the pulse of pop culture, right?   In all seriousness, what better time is there to assess the old Switch's legacy than when its successor has recently taken centre-stage? In particular, with the benefit of eight years' hindsight, we really get into whether the Switch deserves to be remembered as the natural home of indie games in the late-2010s to mid-2020s.   Some indies certainly shone on the platform — there was surely a symbiotically beneficial relationship between the Switch and say, Stardew Valley, Hades, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Undertale, Untitled Goose Game, and loads more that we mention but I'm not going to list here because it's not really that kind of episode — but did that reputation built in the console's early days persist through the latter years, which saw upsets like the advent of the Steam Deck coming to eat Nintendo's lunch?   As is often the case on Indiventure, the debate gets spirited but not at all heated: Liam literally used to host a YouTube fan channel dedicated to the Switch, so his affection for the platform is evident; it's fair to say that Rachel's love for consoles generally dissipated after the DS era (she's willing to be convinced but only if they ever bring back Nintendogs!); and Rebecca makes the case for the Switch as the enduring home of niche Japanese titles that may not always be true indies but certainly get marketed like them in the west.   In this week's hyperfixations, Rachel has enjoyed sci-fi survival game The Alters very much and thinks you should check out her review on GamesRadar to find out why you probably would too. After a year away, Rebecca is once again locked in on a new playthrough of the little indie that could, a.k.a. Baldur's Gate 3. And Liam has recently resubscribed to NowTV and so finds himself finally able to catch up on all the prestige TV he's been missing out on due to not having access to that particular streaming service, like White Lotus, Succession, and The Rehearsal. Plus: Conclave (Liam discovered his hyperfixation in his own, unique, rambling way).   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. Don’t 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!

It's episode 40(!!) of Indieventure, and this episode, we’re checking in with what we’ve all been playing recently and turns out it’s a fantastic bundle of indies! Who would have guessed!   Our May 2025 list includes the bonkers immersive sim Skin Deep, the cutesy mystery adventure The Beekeeper's Picnic: A Sherlockian Adventure, the introspective, interactive essay Many Nights a Whisper, Rusty Lake’s secret-stuffed The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show, nostalgic slice-of-life Despelote, and yes-we-know-it’s-not-strictly-indie-but-it’s-double-A-so-we’re-yapping-about-it Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.   We then launch into our opinions on the second (and final) chapter of Lost Records: Bloom and Rage. A lot of mixed feelings here, but the overall consensus is that we love Bloom and Rage, but Don’t Nod needs to chuck their stealth sections in the bin. Thanks in advance Don’t Nod, love you though oxoxo. If you'd like to avoid (minor) spoilers, we talk about the game between 1:05:00 - 1:39:00.   We round off the episode with some hyperfixations! Rachel’s pick is the Thinky Direct, a very cool showcase celebrating thinky games which you should definitely watch, PUH-LEASE (6pm BST, 29th May, and if you missed it, it’ll be on YouTube). Liam has been falling back in love with the Switch before the release of the Switch 2. And finally, Rebecca talks about about Game Performance Matters, an initiative formed by a group of voice actors who are pushing back against studios using AI in the VA space - a disgusting practice which is becoming scarily more common in the video games industry. She’s been chatting voice actor Kit Harrison, who has provided important resources for those who would like to support Game Performance Matters and the ongoing voice actors' strike in the games industry. We’ll link them all below.   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. Don’t 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!   Game Performance Matters: https://linktr.ee/gameperformancematters Kit Harrison: @kitharrison.com‬

In this episode of Indieventure Extra, Rachel chats with puzzle bestie and Thinky Games colleague Joseph Mansfield about - you guessed it - thinky games! Joe is the head puzzle expert over at Thinky Games.com and is the brains behind the Thinky Games database, the Thinky Awards, ThinkyCon AND the brand new and upcoming Thinky Direct puzzle showcase! That's quite the puzzle-focused CV, not to mention his thinky-based YouTube channel Joe Plays Puzzle Games, which you should definitely check out. You can also find Joe on BlueSky and play his games over on itch.io! The two delve into their favourite puzzle games, different puzzle design philosophies, and have a chat about the wonderful thinky community too.  If you'd like to see the Thinky Direct, you can tune in at 10am PDT, 1pm EDT, 7pm CEST, 6pm BST on May 29th. The showcase will be livestreamed over at ThinkyGames.com, the Thinky Games Twitch page, and the Thinky Games YouTube channel.  Joe's Hyperfixation is the YouTube channel Sounds Like! Enjoy the episode! 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.  

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 Ábramar, 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 – maybe at your next dinner party! – 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. Don’t 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!

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 – 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 – and don't you dare remind us that we're totally undeniably ⅓ of the way through 2025 already – 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 – mainly for reasons of there being so many of the things – 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. Don’t 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!

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 – 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 – including quite a few illegal AAAs who provide some vital context for the discussion – 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 – which launched on the same day as Blue Prince and will surely be coming up on the pod again – 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 don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

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 – with five years of this rotten decade under our belts – 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 don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

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 don’t forget that you can now join our dedicated Discord too!

In this engaging discussion, Davey Wreden, renowned for The Stanley Parable, and Karla Zimonja, co-creator of Gone Home, dive into their latest project, Wanderstop. They candidly explore the paradox of developing a game focused on burnout while feeling the weight of their own creative exhaustion. The duo shares insights on the evolution of their friendship and creative collaboration, highlighting how their contrasting styles enhance storytelling. Also, they reveal the heartwarming origins of Boro, a character embodying emotional warmth, while reflecting on the balance between narrative and player autonomy.

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!