Indieventure

#61. Our Mid-Year Best Indies Check-In 2026

Ahhh, how is it June already?? In this episode, it’s just the gals having a chat as Liam is feeling under the weather and is resting, but fear not, our sweet Geordie boy will be back next episode. Rachel and Rebecca get gabbing about their favourite indie games of 2026 so far, a general vibe-check of gaming this year, and what games they're looking forward to in the second half of the year. 
The two also pick a handful of game highlights from The Power of Pride Bundle over on itch.io, which you should definitely check out, as it’s pride month, HAPPY PRIDE!! Whoooo! Plus, there’s some ‘not-E3’ aka Summer Games Fest talk, with some minor AAA tangents even though this is a podcast about indie games (shhh).
The two mention SO MANY games this episode, but some notable mentions from the first half of this year include: Cairn, Phonopolis, Titanium Court, Wax Heads, Forbidden Solitaire, Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse, and Fears to Fathom: Scratch Creek. And our most anticipated games for the rest of this year include: Moonlight Peaks, The Mermaid Mask, Aquapark Tycoon, Truck-kun is supporting me from another world, Servant of the Lake, I Am Your Host, Toem 2, Penguin Colony, Virtue and a Sledgehammer AND MANY MORE.
For hyperfixations, Rachel thoroughly enjoyed watching Backrooms in the cinema and Rebecca has been blushing and kicking her feet over the book Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian.
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!

#60. What We've Been Playing (Forbidden Solitaire, Mina the Hollower, Wax Heads)

And so we're back from outer space (or wherever it is Indieventure hosts like to go on holiday). Yep, after our little recording hiatus – seamlessly covered for with pre-recorded Pokémon chat, bet you didn't even notice that was a weird one – your intrepid trio is back together for the first time in a month, and naturally we all have one question on our minds: what have we all been playing while we were apart?
Of course, two-thirds of the group were on dream holidays and thus didn't play a whole lot, but there's still plenty to talk about, between all the cool indies that launched in April/May and all the awesome games that have been sitting in our backlogs waiting for exactly this kind of downtime! So Rebecca (who is the only one who hadn't been on her holidays yet at the time of recording) dusted off some intriguing older one-shot indies in the form of 2:22AM and Babette, as well as falling down the Forbidden Solitaire rabbit hole. Rachel made the most of about one week with her PC, also playing Forbidden Solitaire as well as Wax Heads, Phonopolis, and a frankly unbelievable amount of other games given the short time she was home. Liam has only really played one indie game all month, but since it's Mina the Hollower he's certainly not short of opinions to share with the group.
We end as ever on our latest round of hyperfixations, and Rachel currently thinks there's nothing better in this world than a sweet little TikTok remix about a cat named Serafino (and she's probably right!). Liam proves that South Korea is still completely dominating the Netflix original programming market with Culinary Class Wars, a cooking competition made extra special by the contrasting personalities of the two hosts. And Rebecca is finally ready to talk about The Saint of Steel series by T Kingfisher, the series singlehandedly responsible for turning her opinion of romantasy on its head.
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!

SIDE QUEST: Our Cursed Rankings of Gen 1 Pokémon

So due to how everyone's holiday schedules have lined up this month, there was no way we were recording enough regular episodes to cover the gap. But this is Indieventure, where we love an excuse to go on a sidequest, and we hate leaving you without an episode if there's any way around it so…
Look, we wanted to talk about Pokémon, alright?
Yes, I know, I know, tiny indie franchise Pokémon, maybe you've heard of it? I mean, you listen to a podcast hosted by three queer millennial geeks, it's on you if you hadn't figured out by now that we were all obligate Pokémon fans in our spare time. What's more, the recent release of Pokémon Pokopia has finally provided us with a contemporary outlet that all three of us can rally around: Liam gets his serotonin hits from completing an escalating series of tasks, Rachel gets the cosy vibes of post-humanity settlement building and creature collecting, and Rebecca gets to make a nice home for all the cute villagers she's befriending. It's our shared dream!
But, plot twist, there's more to this episode than just complimenting Pokopia, partly because we'd all made vastly different headway into the game at the time of recording, and partly because Liam came up with a much more satisfyingly unhinged idea:
Ranking all of the original 150 Pokémon, based on a completely inconsistent and constantly moving scale of how good a hang we think they'd be.
So there you go: your bit-o-bullshit premise for this episode. I won't spoil anything for you other than to confirm that, yes, against all odds, three people did manage to each give individual opinions about 150 characters in a tight two hours – that's 450 total Poképinions, so talk about bang for your buck! — and that, of course, we end on a final ranking of the best and worst 10, as decided by an aggregate of the group's votes.
We hope you enjoy, and we promise we'll be back to talking about indie games in the next one!
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!
 

#59. 2025 The Final Review: Awards, Missed Games, and Thoughts

Video game awards season 2025 is over, which means it's time once again for the annual Indieventure round-up of the year that was… surely, in 2026, this can only mean glad tidings and good vibes…?
Okay so it's not our most cheerful yearly debrief, but just because our podcast is 75% scatalogical humour and barely-concealed thirsting over fictional characters doesn't mean we can't get serious when we need to, and if now's not the time, then when will be? So expect some lively discussion about indie game trailers during award shows, the problem the academy has with indie sequels and multiplayer titles, the shrinking of nomination pools in an industry that sees thousands of new releases a year, and more hot analytical topics.
For supplementary reading, here's the article Chris Dring wrote over at The Game Business that Rachel recommends in this episode: Who really won The Game Awards?
We do also have some fun chats, of course, celebrating the great indie games recognised over this awards season, including 2025 Indiventure favourites Blue Prince, Citizen Sleeper 2, Wanderstop, Despelote, Hades II, Ball x Pit, PEAK, Lost Records, and a bunch more!
There's also our annual run-down of some cool games we forgot to cover last year, including Sektori, No I'm Not a Human, and Demonschool — the latter of which our more attentive listeners might recall we actually did cover already, but Rebecca's finally got around to playing it properly too and doesn't want to be left out after she spent literal years anticipating its release.
We end, as always, on our recent hyperfixations. Liam has been binging Dan Levy's latest Netflix outing, comedy crime caper Big Mistakes; Rachel has been playing Dosa Divas, although her feelings towards the game are not uncomplicated; and Rebecca has been having an extremely uncomplicated time switching off her brain with the help of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.
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!

#58. Listener mailbag (April 2026)

Hey kids, remember me? I'm Clive, the ostrich Indieventure forces to write episode descriptions when Rebecca is otherwise indisposed. What's been going on with me, you ask? Not much. Liam recently transferred me from the large glass cube that served as my prison into his guest bedroom after the RSPCA kicked his door down and tasered him in the throat. Thanks to the threat of further legal action, I'm now free to roam his home, and every Tuesday he takes me to the Big Tesco so I can stick my grotesque neck through shelves to scare passing children (which is, of course, my favourite hobby). Life is good.
This week on the podcast, the trio are celebrating the wild amount of money you all donated by answering some of your questions! Which indie games should have developer commentaries? Which games from the vault would they sacrifice under spectral duress? Which critically acclaimed indies can they not get on with, no matter how hard they try? They answer these questions, and more! What a treat! For you. Not for me. I literally cannot stand these three.
Before you've even had time to roll your big ostrich eyes in your big ostrich head at whatever Liam constitutes as acceptable answers, it's time for hyperfixations. Rachel has been journeying through surreal roguelike Sol Cesto. Rebecca has been watching Carisa Hendrix (and, by extension, Lucy Darling) over on that there YouTube. Liam provides bite-sized verdicts for both Mouse: P.I. for Hire and Vampire Crawlers.
Well, I best be off. I'm going to stand in the kitchen and flap my enormous wings for an hour, shrieking like a broken kettle that simply cannot boil water any more than it already has. Until next time!
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!
 

#57. What We've Been Playing (Mewgenics, Creature Kitchen, Starsand Island)

Before we begin, let's take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate our new podcast art! This is something we've been wanting to do for a while, and we've had the great good fortune to be able to collaborate with the extremely talented friend of the podcast Simon (@simonwl.bsky.social) for our shiny new banner and logo! Let's just sit here and take it in for a few more moments because it's awesome!
Further to that – and I promise I'm going to start the proper show notes soon, but I don't know how far some of you get into these descriptions and I wouldn't want you to miss this – today marks the beginning of the first-ever Indieventure funding drive! If you're one of the lovely people who's been trying to give us money for years, now's your opportunity: we've started a Ko-Fi (ko-fi.com/indieventure), which will be open for two weeks after this episode goes live.
Any funds you generously donate will be spent on improving Rachel and Rebecca's recording set-ups and covering the podcast's annual operating costs, with any leftovers spent on snacks and supplies for our yearly in-person recording session this summer. As far as we're concerned this is a one-off for now, and we understand completely that not everybody will be in a situation where they can donate – just know that anything you can give is greatly appreciated, and regardless of any financial transaction, we're just so grateful that you've stuck with us this far. Thank you, and we love you!
And with that: onto the episode notes.
Since we took a little hiatus last month, we thought it was the right time to catch up on what everyone's been playing lately. Rachel shares her thoughts upon finishing Cairn, as well as Creature Kitchen and (not really indie but we have decided to allow this series on the podcast for… reasons) Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse. Liam's been catching up on Rise of the Golden Idol, checking out this year's first indie darling Mewgenics, and revisiting The Coin Game as it leaves early access. And Rebecca's mainly been playing demos – specifically for upcoming romantic horror titles Sucker for Love: Crush Landing and My Eerie Lair – but has also been spending some time in anime-esque Stardew-alike Starsand Island.
We end, as always, with our latest round of hyperfixations, and everyone's very on-brand this week. Liam wants to talk about Resident Evil Requiem; Rachel has discovered the delights of The Golden Girls; and Rebecca has finally read Battle Royale, the turn-of-the-millennium dystopian thriller novel by Koushun Takami that inspired so much of the media she's been enjoying ever since.
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!

#56. The Vault: I Can't Believe It's Not Been Vaulted Already

Thanks for bearing with us listeners! After various real life events necessitated we take a month-long hiatus, we're happy to be back with a new episode, and what better way to kick off season whatever-we're-on-now than with a visit to the prestigious Indieventure Vault?
The theme this time around is extremely simple: all three of us got a free pick of whatever favourite indie game we felt was the Vault's biggest outstanding omission to date. For Rebecca, that was archaeological adventure/hieroglyphic decryption puzzle game Heaven's Vault; for Liam, it was that surprisingly upbeat soulslike about reapers, aptly named Death's Door; and for Rachel, it was of course Cocoon — I mean, she literally wrote the book on it. (Pssst, go pre-order Rachel's upcoming book about Cocoon if you haven't already!)
We end, as always, with our latest hyperfixations, and since we've been away for a month, it's a… diverse bunch for sure. Rachel has spent her recent holiday wisely by getting very into WWE (scandal noted), and in particular has identified her favourite wrestler as everyman Mick Foley (no scandals to note, turns out he's just lovely??). Liam has been playing a lot of AAAs recently, but neither Overwatch nor Pokémon Pokopia nor even Resident Evil Requiem have been enough to overshadow his newfound love for 2017 Canadian mockumentary sitcom Nirvanna The Band The Show. And Rebecca has belatedly been captivated by the strangely bland allure of Love & Deepspace's player housing update.
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!

EXTRA: Demos we played during Steam Next Fest Feb 2026 with Robin Bea

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 fellow podcast pal Robin Bea about some very good Steam Next Fest demos! The duo discuss three of their favourites, then end with two honourable mentions. Rachel also forgot to ask Robin her hyperfixation, so Robin will have to come back as a guest in the future!
If you'd like to follow Robin's work, you can find links to all her socials and projects here, PLUS her podcasts Girl Mode and dotzip! You can find the Steam Next Fest demo episode of dotzip HERE.
Demos mentioned in this episode:Helix: Descent N Ascent, Phonopolis, Unhomely, Mermaid Mask, Bobo Bay, Dosa Divas, Walk The Frog, and Raccoin
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.

#55. Retro '90s Dating Show but with Indie Game Characters (for Valentine's Day)

Being firmly children of the '90s, all three hosts of Indieventure are at least passingly familiar with Blind Date, the British dating game show that ran from 1985 to 2003 which was iconically hosted by Cilla Black and Paul O'Grady. Look, I promise this is relevant. When we realised we couldn't do our originally planned topic for this episode and needed to come up with something else at short-notice, and also that the release date fell right around Valentine's Day, we threw around some ideas and eventually realised we'd just re-invented Blind Date with extra steps. Such is the millennial curse, I suppose (one of many).
So yes, this is one for the bit-o'-bullshit fans, as we trot out indie gaming's most eligible batches (I'm told that this is the gender-neutral term for bachelors and bachelorettes – I'm personally a proponent of bachelandorette but fine, it's fine) for a dating game panel show type arrangement. We each attempt to embody our chosen singletons (and a few that we thought just ought to dump their canonical partners); ask some off-the-wall questions of one another; get briefly weirded out because as long-time friends playing a dating game together is a surprisingly odd experience; and generally attempt to do improv despite none of us being trained in the art. It goes surprisingly well! We had a lot of fun, hopefully you will too.
I won't spoil the surprise by revealing the dates right here, but suffice to say if you've ever wondered which character from another game should be the next addition to Melinoë's polycule, or whether Chef Fujimoto from Octodad has healed enough to move on with his life and find love… well, the answers are all in this episode. Allegedly. I cannot stress enough that none of this is canon, and for legal reasons we don't claim that it is.
We finish, as ever, on our hyperfixations, and it says a lot about the vibes of this episode that they're comparatively quite hinged this week. In preparation for the imminent release of Resi 9, Liam has been addressing the sole gap in his Resident Evil franchise knowledge by finally playing RE6 to see if it's as bad as he remembers from when he played half an hour at launch and then dropped off it. Rachel continues her commitment to playing fewer games slower with shout-outs to upcoming Paranormasight sequel The Mermaid's Curse, Cairn, and hidden gem of the farming/social sim genre Before The Green Moon. Rebecca, meanwhile, has been tempted back into the MCU by the word-of-mouth reputation of Wonder Man – an honestly brilliant buddy dramedy about the vicious world of Hollywood that just happens to feature some superheroes occasionally – and can't believe that Disney isn't doing more to promote their best Marvel offering in years that just happens to feature two men of colour as the leads, hmmm how strange, GO WATCH WONDER MAN while you ponder that one everybody.
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!

#54. What we've been playing this winter (TR-49, Cairn, Strange Antiquities)

There's still officially six weeks of winter left – seriously, look it up, the groundhog saw his shadow this year and everything – but here at Indieventure we've been bundled up cosy playing so many lovely games that we figured we'd just talk about them right now!
In keeping with our general commitment not to force ourselves to always play brand-new stuff, this episode's line-up is a respectable mix of games that were released in 2026 and games that are just… new-ish. Okay, in all honesty, none of our picks have gone back more than a year – the oldest one is only from February 2025 – but hey, baby steps.
So, what have we been playing? Well, our digital climbing expert Rachel has unsurprisingly already been caught up enjoying Cairn, while Liam once again throws himself at the electric fence labelled "what you can get away with calling a Double-A" to talk about Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. Rebecca has been excavating under last September's Silksong rubble and surfaced clutching the slightly neglected but still well-worth-playing Strange Antiquities. On a break from the mountain, Rachel turned her talents to playing ghost detective in Utter a Name. Meanwhile, Liam has been playing one of those Steam games, you know the ones… this one's called Wicked Seed, and it's not actually what it sounds like, but your first thought was probably not entirely wide of the mark either. More importantly, though, it's actually a pretty decent solo-dev effort at a Resi-like, so to try to focus on that.
And finally, it turns out we've all played TR-49, the latest short outing from inkle that sees you sifting through an archive of digitised books to understand an alternate history of 20th century Britain. So we whipped up a quick group review, starting with a safe, spoiler-free chat before turning to all the spoilers at 1:38:16, because this game is really too short and involved to dance around the main themes. It's a game that's best enjoyed fresh though, so skip to 1:54:03 if you'd prefer to play it for yourself first.
We end, as always, on our latest hyperfixations. Rachel sneaks in one more indie game rec (technically legal, but irregular) in Type Help, an in-browser itch.io text adventure from last year that's anticipating a shiny expanded re-release in 2026 as adventure game The Incident at Galley House. Liam has been reading The Everlasting by Alex E. Harrow – yes, it's a sad book, but it's also kind of romantasy, so he knows the other two will be extra on-board with this particular recommendation. And Rebecca has been feeling a little bit too seen as a queer millennial gamer thanks to the YouTube comedy oeuvre of Blake Jennings.
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!