Indieventure

Ring out those solstice bells, the longest night of the year is now behind us! But we've still got weeks and weeks of winter left to go, so if you're looking for some indie games to help pass those cold and dark nights, you're in the right place: it's the third (or maybe fourth, depending on how you count) annual Indieventure GOTY episode! This is our smallest GOTY cohort ever, with just 12 games – not because this wasn't a great year for indies, but because your trio of hosts are in greater agreement than ever before as we slowly but surely merge into a single terrifying gestalt consciousness. As a fun challenge, why not pick one game from this list to play every day during the 12 days of Christmas? Sure, that'd be prohibitively expensive and impossibly time-consuming, but if you already have some to hand, consider this the sign you were waiting for to tackle some of that backlog – truly a festive tradition for many of us gamers at this point. As ever we won't spoil our Christmas selection box here in the show notes, but you can always check the Indiventure website for a full list of games mentioned in the episode. Furthermore, maybe keep an eye on that blog over the festive period if you're interested in some additional stocking stuffers in written form from your Indieventure hosts and some friends of the podcast… Our final round of hyperfixations for 2025 progresses at lightning speed because we're all very tired and want to start our Christmas break, please. Stranger Things 5 has Rebecca's seal of approval, while Super Mario Galaxy on Switch 2 is similarly acclaimed by Liam, and Rachel recommends The Chair Company season finale. Thank you all and good night: merry Christmas, happy holidays, a peaceful midwinter to you all, and we'll see you in 2026! 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 festive season is well and truly upon us, which can only mean one thing! …Actually that's not true, it means loads of things to all sorts of different people. But to an Indieventure listener, it means our increasingly established tradition of putting together a two-part end-of-year round-up! Tune back in for our Game of the Year list discussion on December 22nd, but first, it's time for a more free-form look at the year that was. If you've listened to one of these before you'll know that this episode can end up being quite… cathartic for your trio of hosts, who've once again witnessed a year in the games industry that can generously be characterised as full of highs and lows. But aside from… all that, what were this year's big trends in indie games specifically? We delve into the unusual prominence given this year to longer indie games, indie game sequels, and indie games as digital third spaces (because we know "friendslop" is mostly meant as an affectionate joke but haven't we landed on a much better name there?). Also, expect some spicy takes on whether Steam's monopoly in the PC gaming market is causing them to increasingly become more of a problem than a champion for indie publishing. We end as ever with our hyperfixations, and Rachel is keen to bring your attention to Thinky Dailies, a new daily series of in-browser brainteasers from our good pals over at Thinky Games – guaranteed to make you feel smarter than Wordle as well as being much, much less cursed. Liam is eager to highlight the excellent and highly timely video essay Greed is Destroying the World by Drew Gooden. And finally it's a rare musical recommendation from Rebecca, who's been listening to the Mountain Goats and their amazing new concept album, Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan. 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 time for another episode of Indieventure EXTRA, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry. In this episode, Rachel chats with award-winning indie developer Lucy Blundell! Lucy is someone the Indieventure gang have wanted on the podcast for SO LONG, so we are very honoured to have her insights on what it’s like creating semi-autobiographical stories, the challenges of putting your personal life into your work as an artist, and the ways players can connect to the games they play on an emotional level. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s work, you should play her games! You can play both One Night Stand and VIDEOVERSE on just about every gaming platform you can think of. Lucy’s Hyperfixation is The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy! 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.

The title says it all really: the Indieventure podcast is celebrating a couple of milestones, and you're all invited! Hope you like parties where three people indulge in absolute bullshit banter at length because that's what we've got for you today as we mark both our 50th episode and our podcast's only ever-so-slightly belated second birthday. You really do deserve to hear some of this without being spoiled by any pesky context beforehand, so suffice to say that Rebecca has put together a quiz with a heavy visual component (check out our blog for the companion piece to that!) and Liam has written A Thing. Don't ask. Just listen. Trust me, it's better that way. After completely wearing ourselves out with that nonsense, we mellow out a bit with a slightly more sensible second half in which we discuss a few games we've been playing recently – including The Séance of Blake Manor, Hades II, PEAK, and Demonschool – before making a very optimistic wishlist of all the amazing 2025 indies we'd love to play before recording our GOTY episode but, like, we're starting to get a bit nervous about the timeframe on that, not gonna lie. Finally onto hyperfixations, this week with some completely improvised bonus bullshit about which Pokémon starter type each of us would be! Liam (grass type) has been finishing his 2025 Goodreads challenge by reading some of the most acclaimed short novels he could find, including The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, Foster by Claire Keegan, and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Rachel (fire type) is once again bingeing The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which has become surprisingly meta in its new season. And Rebecca (water type) somehow hadn't heard of The Amazing Digital Circus until very recently, but now she's been completely drawn in by the hype. 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!

Now that the nights are well and truly closing in (for us here in the UK at least) and Halloween is behind us, there's just enough time for the Indieventure trio to take one last look at the latest batch of new(ish) indie games we've been enjoying before turning our attention to the serious business of end-of-year celebrations. We say new-ish because, while Rachel and Liam are as on it and up-to-the-minute as ever, Rebecca has wandered off on a bit of a side-quest. Basically, it's still Halloween in her heart, and if that means shining a spotlight on some spooky (and/or romantically spooky-adjacent) games from six months or two years or heck, even nearly a decade ago, then it's more than worth it to create what we hope you'll all agree is a suitably autumnal vibe. To that end, our round robin discussion in this episode encompasses games including Absolum, Ball x Pit, Easy Delivery Co., Herdling, Layers of Fear (both the 2016 and 2023 versions), Monster Prom 4, Monstrous Love, and of course, PowerWash Simulator 2. Regular listeners might already have noticed that we've had a longer break between episodes than usual, and so naturally we've found plenty to be hyperfixated on in that time. Rachel has discovered the SCP Foundation collaborative fiction project, and while it's given her a bit of a crisis over her love for a certain suspiciously similar Remedy game, she nevertheless thinks you all should go and read about an eldritch basketball game in SCP-1733 if you haven't encountered it yet. Meanwhile, Liam's been enjoying some movies courtesy of Eatflix in Newcastle, and also thanks to everyone's favourite breathtaking meme machine Keanu Reeves' latest starring role in Good Fortune. And Rebecca has finally got her hands on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, her feelings on which are far too complex to condense down into this brief text summary, but on which she is at least qualified to speak with some authority as an OG mega-fan of the 21-year-old original cult classic. 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!

This episode of EXTRA is a particularly special one, as our guest today is none other than our very own Rachel Watts! Rachel has spent the last 12 months writing a book all about COCOON, the 2023 puzzle game developed by Geometric Interactive. The book chronicles the development of the game, including its puzzle design, world-building, and soundscapes. Featuring exclusive interviews with its creators, this stunning tome is available for pre-order RIGHT NOW via the Lost In Cult website. In the episode, Rachel reveals what it was like to undertake a project of this scale, as well as providing some teasers of what you can expect when the book is released next year. Of course, this wouldn't be an EXTRA episode hosted by Liam if it didn't dive into Rachel's past a little bit, too. Listen to find out about the early days of Rachel's career in journalism, an incredible anecdote about her time studying film at university, and an absolute gem about her brief stint at Card Factory. You can read Rachel's work on FemHype here. Pre-order COCOON: Design Works here! 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.  

There's been a bit of a scheduling pile-up at Indieventure HQ: within the next three episodes we somehow have to fit in our 2nd anniversary, Halloween, and our 50th episode, and make all of them feel as special as they deserve. Working around a lot of real-life commitments at the moment also means that we had to bulk-record a bunch of episodes back-to-back and… look, what I'm trying to say is, yes I realise now that we're technically hitting Halloween an episode early, but let's just agree that it works and feels deliberate, OK? Because we've decided to hold back the traditional anniversary bit-o'-bullshit for Ep.50 (mark your calendars for November!), we decided that this milestone deserved another trip to the prestigious Indieventure Vault. We've been toying with the idea of dedicating some Vault space to specific genres for a while, and where better to start than with horror? It's a linchpin within the indie gaming scene, after all, and as ever our hosts can get some good mileage out of the fact that we all have very different feelings towards the genre: Rebecca is a total scare-seeker, Liam won't even talk about spooky games without a light on in the room, and Rachel is a recent convert who now happily occupies a space somewhere in-between. When it came to picking our favourite spooky games to induct into the Vault, we were slightly surprised to realise that there aren't actually very many in there yet, which gave us something of a blank canvas to work with. In deference to everyone's wellbeing and in the name of keeping things interesting we were pretty loose on what we think deserves the title of "horror game", but it was nevertheless surprisingly easy to settle on our three latest submissions: Signalis, Slay the Princess, and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, all of which we give their rapturous (and increasingly surreal) initiation ceremony in this episode. Onto hyperfixations, and you can tell we're approaching the end of the year because everyone's suddenly checking out a bunch of games. Rachel's been playing some solid gold indies as ever in the form of Öoo and Rise of the Golden Idol's latest DLC, The Curse of the Last Reaper. Meanwhile, Liam's been enjoying the glorious experiment in indie dev collaboration that is Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored. And, because Rebecca's schedule can't be tamed at the moment, she's bucking the trend with two of the biggest AAA releases of the year instead: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (on PS5) and Silent Hill f. 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 last time Liam spoke with Ed Thorn, he was days away from announcing his departure from Rock Paper Shotgun. Beginning his career as a guides writer, Ed climbed the ranks to become reviews editor of the prestigious PC gaming blog, before deciding it was time to finally move on. Ten months after that original episode went live (eight when we recorded this - soz for the delay) Ed returns to discuss what it's like to say goodbye to your dream job. Together, the pair discuss their reasons for moving on, the things they're glad to leave behind, and the moments they'll always look back on with fondness.  This one has a slightly different vibe from our usual episodes. It's less "three feral goblins screech about Peggle", and more "two old men reminisce about the good old days".  You can find more of Ed's thoughts in this wonderful article he kindly wrote for our website. 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.

OK so here's the thing: as an indie game podcast – even one that we put out for free and entirely just for fun – we can't not acknowledge the recent release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, one of the most anticipated indie games ever, right? But also, as it turns out, for various reasons, none of us have actually played it. What to do, then? Well it turns out that while exactly zero out of three hosts had the time or – to be honest – inclination to jump right in and play Silksong at launch, we've all got a lot to say on the subject of indie game sequels more broadly. While Triple-A and even Double-A gaming spaces are absolutely saturated with long-running franchises, even very popular and successful indie games are seemingly more likely to be standalone than not, which makes sequels something of a curiosity when one comes along. So that's how we manage to talk about Silksong without actually mentioning Silksong very much! Be it the indie game sequels that really worked for us, the ones that never saw the light of day, or our dream indie game follow-up wishlist, it turns out we have a lot to say as usual when we throw the topic open to a wider examination of an intriguing industry trend. Why is it mainly puzzle and/or horror games that manage to turn themselves into full-blown indie franchises? Do spiritual sequels count? And is Liam over the cancellation of Dreamsettler yet? (Sadly: no, but we shouldn't rush him.) Our hyperfixations this week see Rachel once again chilling with some cute critters in Star Birds, Liam once again chilling with some factory management in Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure, and Rebecca once again seeking out the least chill time imaginable by going to see The Long Walk in the cinema (it was a great film, just… harrowing). 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!

Hello, it's me again, the Ostrich that writes episode descriptions in exchange for small amounts of grain. My name is Clive, by the way. Not that any of you asked 🙄 Things have been a bit better for ol' Clive these last few weeks. Liam fell down a storm drain in early August and broke every bone in his body, rendering him unable to lock me in the glass cube that serves as my home. As a treat, I've been able to wander freely around his home, pecking at bits of bread on the kitchen floor and doing huge, violent shits in his wardrobe. The good times won't last forever, but you've got to make the most of them while they're here. In this episode, the gang decided to celebrate the changing seasons by getting all Witchy. We're talking horoscopes, tarot reading, and a discussion about their favourite witches in indie games. The trio have a lot on at the moment and had to bulk record a few episodes at once, making this a more relaxed affair compared to their usual feral nonsense. Even their hyperfixations are surprisingly tame. Rachel has been playing Tiny Bookshop - a fixation so potent that Rebecca chose to make it hers as well - while Liam has been playing through Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. See? I told you. It's like I asked an AI chatbot to generate hyperfixations. I didn't do that, btw. We ostriches are naturally sceptical about generative AI, seeing as we're experts in identifying when people have their heads stuck in the sand. Anyway, I'd best be off. Liam just rolled off the sofa and is now unable to get up. I can't miss this opportunity to lay a big egg in his cereal. Tatty bye x 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 Steam Curator page if you simply still can’t get enough of us!