Indieventure

Episode 23: Indieventure Jukebox: our favourite indie game soundtracks

Music is undeniably a huge part of what makes video games special, both individually and on an industry-wide level. Not only is no gaming award show complete without a gong for the year's best soundtrack, but even the Proms have started acknowledging that video game scores have come a long way since the 8-bit days (without throwing any shade on chiptune, a legitimate genre in and of itself with some stone-cold classics). That's probably why, from huge AAAs to smaller indies, music can account for a significant chunk of any game's budget — and it's definitely worth the investment.
For this episode, the Indieventure trio have pooled our vinyl collection to talk about some of our personal favourite indie game music highlights. I know you guys say you love long show notes but there's seriously no way I'm going to be able to list every track we talk about here — which is why we've put together [a YouTube playlist] that should cover everything instead! A quick overview, though, sees us talking about the music from games including Balatro, Bombrush Cyberfunk, Braid, Celeste, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dear Esther, Death's Door, Dicey Dungeons, Disco Elysium, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Fields of Mistria, Firewatch, Hades, Hades II, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Hollow Knight, Hotline Miami, Hypnospace Outlaw, Journey, Kentucky Route Zero, Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp, Minecraft, No Straight Roads, Paradise Killer, Pizza Tower, Pyre, Return of the Obra Dinn, Stardew Valley, A Tower Full of Cats, Trombone Champ, Undertale, Unravel, and We Happy Few.
If you'd like to hear every track we discuss in this episode in its entirety, we've added them all to a convenient YouTube playlist that you can find here.
During the course of this chat we also promise you a couple of specific links, so go here for Bombrush Cyberfunk soundtrack memes, and here for one of the Ace Attorney x Danganronpa musical mashup channels on YouTube that Rebecca (and now Rachel too) is so very fond of.
 
Finally, as ever, are our current hyperfixations! Rebecca has discovered an accidentally awesome double-bill of horror novels with a timely social message in Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays and Grady Hendrix's The Final Girl Support Group; Liam's been having a whimsical time in recently-released indie platformer The Plucky Squire; and Rachel is having a moment with girly pop in general, and Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter in particular, thanks to the recent VMAs award show.
 
Our music, meanwhile, 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.
 

Episode 22: Our Indie Cup Europe '24 Jurors' Debrief

This summer, the good folks over at Indie Cup once again asked three podcasters known for opining at length on the subject of indie games to be jurors at their festival, and once again Liam, Rachel, and Rebecca were all too happy to take part. This time was a little different, however, as instead of the UK having a branch of the festival all to itself like last year, for 2024 Indie Cup held one big festival encompassing all of Europe!
Even though we were only jurors in one category (Critics' Choice, thanks so much again to the organisers for putting far more faith in the professionalism of our opinions than we sometimes do ourselves!), we still looked at literally hundreds of games over the course of the summer — and, now that the results are in, we've gathered together to discuss some of our personal highlights from the festival.
We begin our debriefing, as is only right and fair, with the winner of the Indie Cup Europe '24 Critics' Choice Award and the only double-winner in this year's festival: the very deserving Phonopolis, a charming and visually striking dystopian resistance puzzle game by Amanita Design. We're all genuinely delighted it won, especially since it was the only game we were all equally taken with when playing through this year's shortlist.
We then move on to some worthy runners-up from our category's shortlist: retro-stylised gardening horror Grunn, surreal-yet-wholesome exploration puzzler Henry Halfhead, toy-themed musical sandbox Oddada, historical courtroom mystery based on true events The Darkest Files, and interactive historical fiction drama Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina).
Finally, we dedicate a little time to just a few of the many games from the Critics' Choice Award longlist that didn't make the final cut, but which at least one of us would have loved to see make it into the final round, including Aquapark Tycoon, Fruitbus, KreatureKind, Nurikabe World, and Sulfur.
Onto hyperfixations and Rachel has been playing The Iron Rig, the latest DLC addition to this podcast's collective 2023 GOTY Dredge, and yup it sure is more Dredge — what more could you ask for? Liam has, if you can believe it, read yet another sad book: Erasure by Percival Everett, best known now as the basis for the Oscar-winning movie American Fiction. (Word of warning: American Fiction is a comedy; Erasure is… decidedly not.) Rebecca, who really shouldn't be allowed to drive this thing because it clearly sends her on a power trip, quickly shouts out American Vandal on Netflix and the forthcoming Ace Attorney Investigations Collection before getting down to her real latest hyperfixation: The Tomb Raider Compendium, a doorstopper collected edition of early-2000s comic books she spent over a decade trying to get hold of, before finally becoming the proud owner of a copy this week.
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Episode 21: The Vault - Our First Indie Game Loves (Recorded In-Person!!)

This week sees all three of us being extra excitable since — for the first time ever — we got to record an episode in-person! The lack of Discord delays and occasional internet outages really takes the energy up a notch, you'll no doubt be pleased to know. Since it's been the best part of a year since we were last able to get together in person, naturally the first thing we did when we were in the same room again was watch the Ace Attorney movie, which of course we have to discuss a bit before getting into today's main topic.
The prestigious Indieventure Vault is back for its third consignment of the very best indie games we know! This time the selection criteria we settled on was indie game first loves: the very first indie game that each of us can remember being swept away by, quite possibly before we even knew what indie games were in relation to the wider games industry.
Today's trio of vaultworthy games have the common factor of having been released in the span of less than a year between 2012-2013. Was this when indie games suddenly became more readily accessible thanks to the rise of digital storefronts? Or is this just a stark reminder that we're all now firmly in our early 30s? You decide as we each make our cases for the first indie game we ever fell in love with: Journey, the minimalist desert exploration adventure about coming to terms with impermanence (Rebecca); Hotline Miami, the maximalist introspection on ultraviolence as entertainment (Liam); and Proteus, the minimalist deserted island exploration walking sim about impermanence and introspection (Rachel).
Liam also (jokingly, we think?!) suggests inducting Peggle into the Vault, which nearly leads to Rachel committing a hate crime.
Moving on to hyperfixations! Rachel has been playing cute airborne exploration sim slash critter collection game Flock, which has easily cracked her already oversubscribed GOTY contenders list for 2024. Rebecca documents the recent significant moment in her long-term hyperfixation on Danganronpa when she finally finished the series' massive main story arc. And Liam has bought himself an unpronounceable retro handheld game console, which is double the fun because he gets to figure out how to get all his old games working on there and then actually play them again!
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

EXTRA: An interview with Coal Supper, the developers of Thank Goodness You’re Here!

This week, we’re trying something different on Indieventure: an interview! 
We’ve wanted to interview developers on the podcast for a while now, especially those responsible for games that mean a lot to us. We’ve been talking about how we might do this since the days of [REDACTED PODCAST], but have always struggled to find a way that feels right. You see, the thing we love the most about Indieventure is that it’s basically just a long, chaotic Discord call that we publish to the wider world. However, that’s not a vibe that’s very - let’s say - compatible with a traditional interview format. The thought of forcing a developer to sit quietly while we talk about squash for 40 minutes feels borderline illegal, to be honest.
So, instead, we’ve decided to split interviews away from the main podcast and release them as smaller "bonus" episodes like the one you’re listening to today. As you may have noticed, this one is actually being released in a regular slot (none of us were free to record this week, soz), but moving forward the plan is to release them in between regular episodes.
The first instalment in this new series is a conversation with Will Todd and James Carbutt, the co-founders of Coal Supper!, who recently released Thank Goodness You’re Here! to critical acclaim.
We hope you enjoy this inaugural episode of our interview show, and we’ll be back next episode with our usual nonsense!

Episode 20: Our Mid-Year Best Indies Check-In 2024

Wow, how are we halfway through 2024 already?! No need to point out that we're actually closer to 60% of the way through the year by the time this episode is released; better late than never! Yep, it's time for our GOTFHOTY nominations, also known as Games Of The First Half Of The Year, but Rebecca is very proud of having potentially originated an acronym that could totally enter common parlance if people were just willing to give it a chance.
Not quite as formal as our totally scientific Christmas GOTY list, GOTFHOTYs are when we name a bunch of games we can see ending up making our respective top fives depending on what happens between July and December. Rachel's been playing a bunch of great indies and so has already got a few good ideas as to what her end-of-year-list will look like, suggesting that Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, 1000xRESIST, Animal Well, and the newly-released Dungeons of Hinterberg are all up there at the moment. Liam gives nods to Balatro and Crow Country, of course, but Minishoot' Adventures makes for a surprise new frontrunner for him. Rebecca's had a much slower start to her year in terms of GOTY candidates, but has so far been most impressed by Little Kitty, Big City and Cryptmaster.
We couldn't very well call it a proper mid-year check-in if we didn't also look forward to what the Q3/Q4 release schedule is looking like, and so in this episode's second half we collectively rattle off a few games we're excited to hopefully play before the year's out. We can't say for sure yet how we'll feel about the full games, of course, and who knows what surprise releases will turn our heads this autumn? But as it stands, we reckon that Flock, Cataclismo, The Crush House, Demonschool, Phoenix Springs, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Sorry We're Closed, and Dreamsettler have the best odds of upsetting the current rankings.
Much like the midpoint of the year, hyperfixations roll round much quicker than you'd expect. Bafflingly, Rachel has never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer before, but now she's bingeing the show for the first time, which allows Liam and Rebecca to conduct some fascinating research on the only remaining millennial geek not to know this franchise inside-out. Liam has been watching Couples Therapy, a TV documentary series that is decidedly not a reality TV show, thank goodness. Rebecca's been swept up by her day-job hype for Zenless Zone Zero, but was also very excited for the new Hildegard von Blingin' song that dropped just a few hours before recording. Somehow, this turns into a friendly disagreement between her and Liam about whether Fall Out Boy's 2023 modernised cover of We Didn't Start the Fire was good or cringe. (But since Rebecca writes the episode descriptions, allow me to abuse my privilege to set the record straight: it's both. We're both right.)
Finally, for all you folks who love a full and proper account of every game we mention in an episode even when it's not connected to the main topic, know that our GOTFHOTY discussion and mid-year check-in also wanders into the territories of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, Baldur's Gate 3, Boyfriend Dungeon, Harold Halibut, The Last of Us Parts I&II, Loco Motive, Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4, Steamworld Heist 2, Thank Goodness You're Here!, and Tiny Life.
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Episode 19: Next Fest and Chill, a.k.a. what we've been playing this summer

Unbelievably, it's been almost exactly five months since the Indieventure trio last checked in and just chatted about what we've been playing recently — and with June being a touch busy, what with it being Pride Month and our need to arrange travel plans both real and fictional, we totally missed a Steam Next Fest in there too. Time to fix both of those oversights with a laid-back episode which, I'm afraid, is going to put several new games on your wishlist.
 
Liam has been going all vigilante in noirish imsim Fallen Aces, having a surprisingly relaxing time stacking shelves in Supermarket Simulator, and kicking things with his gremlin leg in Anger Foot. Rebecca's found herself sneaking around an oil rig filled with Lovecraftian monsters who are curiously eager to show their many faces in Still Wakes the Deep, and reliving her days as a librarian restocking shelves and getting creeped out by an empty building (please, please be empty) in Amanda the Adventurer 2. Rachel's had a bit of a busman's holiday in journalistic sci-fi visual novel Times & Galaxy, and mixing it up a bit with nonlinear mansion exploration puzzle Blue Prince. Rebecca and Rachel both also played Crush House, which appeals to both of them on a deep level but for very different reasons, Rachel being all about its pitch-perfect reality TV spoof and Rebecca loving how it creatively deconstructs life sims and dating sims.
 
In our latest hyperfixations, Liam and Rachel have had something close to a spiritual awakening listening to Charlie XCX's Brat album on repeat. Rebecca can't quite match their energy on this occasion, but does put forward a good case for Audible-exclusive '00s cult comedy revival Green Wing: Resuscitated.
 
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Episode 18: Planning our indie game summer holiday tour

The UK is enjoying its annual two weeks of good weather and so the Indieventure crew have decided to get together and plan an indie game (well, indie-led) summer holiday! That's right, it's another list episode, featuring a whistlestop tour of some of the greatest vacation destinations in video games according to, as it turns out, three potentially nightmarish travel companions.
Our dream trip turns out to include stops in: Abzu, Anemoiapolis, Animal Crossing: Wild World, BioShock, Book of Travels, Botany Manor, The Coin Game, Danganronpa 2, Dishonored 2, Doomsday Paradise, Dorfromantik, En Garde!, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Final Fantasy VII, Firewatch, Five Nights at Freddy's, The Good Life, Half-Life, A Highland Song, Hooked On You, Huniepop 2, The Last of Us, The Legend of Zelda, Let's Build A Zoo, Overboard, Paradise Killer, Parkasaurus, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, Pokémon Crystal, The Quarry, Resident Evil, Roman Sands RE:Build, A Short Hike, Star Birds, Stardew Valley, Strange Horticulture, Thank Goodness You're Here, Thimbleweed Park, Until Dawn, and The Witness.
In hyperfixations, Rachel has again turned her attention to tabletop gaming and has been greatly enjoying Spots, a card game where you roll dice and apply their dots to a variety of cute dalmatians. Liam has been playing Destiny 2: The Final Shape, reminding him once again that he actually really likes Destiny 2 sorry-not-sorry. Rebecca has been very busy but nevertheless the announcement of Life is Strange: Double Exposure is giving her life.
(Note: We had to record this episode further in advance than usual, which is why you won't hear anyone getting excited about the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection — don't be alarmed, normal service will undoubtedly resume in the next episode.)
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Episode 17: Pride Month Special (even gayer than usual)

Happy Pride Month, Indieventurers! Regular listeners to this 100% LGBTQIA+-fronted podcast will know that we're not exactly quietly closeted for the other 11 months of the year, but this June we've elected to challenge ourselves to make an episode that is our gayest yet. This takes the format of an open-ended chat where we discuss everything from our favourite queer characters and stories in indie games, to some maybe less-than-flawless examples of queer representation (be it explicit or just heavily implied) that we still love, to games that maybe don't have any reference to gender or sexuality at all but which still have such gay energy you'd swear they were developed exclusively by drag queens.
We also chat a bit about our early memories as queer gamers in the '90s and '00s, and naturally the conversation occasionally veers into favourite AAA franchises that make at least a bit of an effort to be inclusive, even though indie games are definitely where it's at for this topic. Oh, and of course we couldn't let the opportunity pass us by to talk a little bit about our favourite gay lawyers and just what exactly makes the Ace Attorney franchise so very blatantly queer despite technically having no properly out characters.
Fans of our rapid-fire conversational shifts are about to eat well as this episode takes us on a whistle-stop tour through literally dozens of our favourite queer-themed, queer-developed, and/or queer-coded games and franchises, including: Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Doki Doki Literature Club!, Fashion Police Squad, Frog Detective, Gone Home, Goodbye Volcano High, If Found…, In Stars & Time, The Last Express, The Last of Us, Life is Strange, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, Mediterranea Inferno, The Missing: J.J. Macfield & the Island of Memories, Paradise Killer, Paralives, Resident Evil 3 (no, really!), The Sims, Simulacra, Slime Rancher, Sucker for Love: Date to Die For, Telltale's The Walking Dead, Thomas Was Alone, Tiny Life, Unpacking, Videoverse, and A Year of Springs.
In this episode's hyperfixations, Liam is fascinated by the concept of building your own internet away from the dubious influences of corporate social media, and recommends checking out sites like Thinky Games and McMansion Hell if you want a return to the good old days of reading about strangers' niche interests in their own personal style of communicating. (Pssst, you should also check out sevenoutoften.co.uk and indieventurepodcast.co.uk if you want to see some sites that Liam has quite literally built himself!) Meanwhile, Rebecca has been reminded of the important work Devcats always do in keeping her mental health in check during stressful times, as she's been navigating a pile-up of life events with the help of their most recent hidden object game, A Tower Full of Cats. Finally, Rachel took our own advice from the last episode and played Crow Country in Exploration mode, and has been very happy with the result.
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.

Episode 16: Indie May-hem (send help)

TOO MANY GREAT GAMES RELEASED IN MAY. Don’t get us wrong, we love being bombarded with cool indies but, MY GOD, May has been wild. In this episode, the Indieventure gang sit down to chat about this phenomenon and get into which games they played out of the torrent of releases.
Liam’s been exploring a creepy abandoned theme park filled with monstrous weirdos in the survival horror game Crow Country and brushing up on his spelling in the fill-in-the-blank dungeon-crawler Cryptmaster. Rebecca flirted with cute monsters (classic Rebecca antics) in horror dating sim Sucker for Love: Date to Die For, while also enjoying the fun animal hijinks of wholesome exploration game Little Kitty, Big City. Rachel went spelunking in a subterranean labyrinth filled with strange creatures in Animal Well and had her brain fried by the intense puzzle powerhouse that is Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. She also checked out 1000xResist and cried over alien invaders, sad clones, and mommy issues. The gang finishes up this bumper crop of indie picks with a discussion about Hades 2 which released into Steam Early Access this month.
To wrap up the episode it’s hyperfixations! Rebecca binged season 5 of Fargo which has taken a refreshing new direction from its other seasons, Liam took a nostalgia trip watching Jackass Forever, and no hyperfixation from Rachel this episode as she’s been resting. Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.

Episode 15: Indie games we missed from 2023

There are two groups of people who agree that the year really ends in April: finance nerds, and gaming award show nerds. No points for guessing which the Indieventure crew belong to as we deep dive into our impressions on awards season now that 2023 is officially done and dusted with the conclusion of the BAFTA Game Awards! Expect some spirited discussions of the indie greats of last year including Viewfinder, Venba, Chants of Sennaar, Tchia, Jusant, Goodbye Volcano High, and many many more, as well as the obligatory sidetracks into Baldur's Gate 3 chat and of course, Dave the Diver.
But that's not all! We three are never ones to allow some remote authority to dictate our discussions, which is why each of us has brought along a game that we'd like to belatedly add to our own 2023 GOTY list! It's an eclectic bunch, as Liam submits Trepang2 — a retro FPS published last summer by Team 17 that the other two somehow never even heard of, let alone expected Liam to pick for this. Rachel goes rogue by choosing Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, a game commissioned and published by Square Enix (and therefore about as indie as Dave the Diver) but which strangely released with so little marketing that we've decided it falls within our remit of informing you about great games you might otherwise miss. Rebecca has finally played The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, and fully agrees with Rachel's assessment back in December that it belongs on our 2023 GOTY list, tardily elevating it to a respectable second podium behind our jointly-agreed-upon favourite, Dredge.
We end, as always, with our hyperfixations! Rachel recently saw actual play troupe Dimension 20 live in London, and thinks that to be honest this might be her thing for a good long while. Liam has got back into Fallout 4 — not because of the TV show and actively in spite of the dodgy new-gen upgrade, but just because he felt like it, which is a very Liam way of going about things. Finally, Rebecca is back on the Rusty Lake train, thanks in part to our recent episode on single-sitting indie games leading to her getting her whole family hooked on the series.
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.