Indieventure

#29. Was 2024 a great year for indie games?

Christmas is almost upon us, and before we ring in the New Year with our GOTY picks, it's time for us here at the Indieventure podcast to pour ourselves a generous glug of mulled wine and reflect on the year as a whole as it pertains to indie games.
Has it been a good year for indies? How did it stack up against previous years – especially the wall-to-wall hit machine that was 2023? And, putting personal preferences aside (because we'll be digging into that in-depth in our next episode, don't worry) what have been the biggest indie games of the year?
Naturally expect Balatro, 1000xRESIST, Hades 2, and Pacific Drive to get a lot of airtime in this one, as well as Silksong (still conspicuous in its absence as we head into 2025). We also look back over our most-anticipated games from the start of the year, checking in with what came out, what got delayed, and what landed unexpectedly (or not) from a list that included Anger Foot, Creepshow, Crow Country, Demonschool, Europa, Loco Motive, Lost Records, The Mermaid Mask (née The Mermaid's Tongue), Rise of the Golden Idol, Sucker for Love 2, Synergy, Thank Goodness You're Here!, and Tiny Bookshop.
And then – just in case you thought we were going to be if anything a bit too sensible in this one – an old friend returns to deliver a self-indulgent quiz! There's really no point in outlining the premise here, just trust us when we say that it has to be heard to be believed.
We end, as always, with our current hyperfixations! Rebecca has been defying gravity thanks to the Wicked movie, Rachel has been reading a stack of queer fiction (specifically Julia Armfield's Salt Slow, Eliza Clark's She's Always Hungry and Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch), while Liam has turned his attention to the skies - and the places it leads - with Mark Vanhoenacker's Imagine A City.
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!

EXTRA: Chatting about PlayStation indies with Oscar Taylor-Kent

It’s time for another Indieventure EXTRA, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry.
We’re pretty PC-focused on Indieventure so in this episode, Rachel has a chat with Oscar Taylor-Kent about PlayStation indies. Oscar is the Games Editor at GamesRadar+ and previous editor of PLAY Magazine and Official PlayStation Magazine so he’s the perfect person to discuss this topic with. Have a listen if you’d like to hear us both take a trip down memory lane and have a gab about Sony’s history with indie games.
You can find Oscar and his work on Twitter, BlueSky, and his GamesRadar+ profile. 
Enjoy~
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.

#28. Does games media change your relationship with gaming?

Like it or not, 2024 is almost over, and Indieventure is closing out the year with a trilogy of episodes looking back on our recent experiences of the games industry. We're saving the more targeted analysis of the year in games and of course our big GOTY reveal for the two episodes due out in December, but today we're starting out with a more general question: how has working in games media impacted our experiences of gaming as a hobby?
What starts out as a light-hearted "day in the life of a games journalist" chat quickly turns into a group therapy session where we go into a fairly serious examination of the realities of working in games media in the 2020s, both good and bad. This is less a chat about specific games and more an overview of games media trends both visible and invisible to the audience, so if you've ever wanted to hear some inside baseball delivered from the Indieventure trio's perspective, here's your chance. We promise the mood gets lighter over the rest of the holiday season episodes, but we're glad we got all this off our chests!
This episode also includes our final pre-GOTY "what we've been playing" round-up, in which Rachel gives a spoiler-free overview of Rise of the Golden Idol; Rebecca catches up on the long-awaited full release of Phoenix Springs; and despite spending much of the past month on another continent, Liam has somehow put another 10 hours into Factorio following the launch of the Space Age expansion.
Last but not least, our hyperfixations for this episode see Liam geeking out over the Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary, Rebecca enjoying "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" by TJ Klune (the sequel to a Season Zero hyperfixation, "The House in the Cerulean Sea"), and Rachel discovering an amazing TV channel called Mech+ which appears to only show reruns of Robot Wars and it turns out we're all very here for that.
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!

#27. Our Fantasy Indie Console Draft Picks

Time for one more bit of silly fun before we settle down to the serious business of 2024 GOTY picks? We certainly think so, as in this week's Indieventure episode, we're doing an indie game draft! That's right, three people who clearly know nothing about sports have nevertheless kitbashed the idea of fantasy football together with something we're actually interested in, and have designed our dream indie gaming consoles following a curious set of rules that Liam explains very well in the episode and so I won't repeat here, even though I do remember and understand them, honest.
Due to the dramatic and intense nature of the game we're playing today, characterised as it is by shocking betrayals and twists nobody could ever see coming, I'm going to strongly recommend you don't read the show notes until you've listened to the episode. Does anyone even actually do that? Well, here's your chance to go in without spoilers.
Seriously, go listen.
Are you back?
OK, good.
So, since you've heard it now, you know that you, dear listener, have a chance to vote in our poll to determine the winner of the inaugural Indieventure draft slash console sales pitch! We'll have a poll up on socials for a week after the episode goes live because that's all Xitter will allow; but if you still want to take part after that, you can do so over at our lovely and still almost-brand-new Indieventure Discord, where the poll will be live for a whole fortnight and where you can also chat with some really cool and nice fellow listeners.
As a reminder, then, the final console drafts were as follows:
The MegaWatt Voyager, pitched by Rachel, and containing Paradise Killer, Kentucky Route Zero, Vampire Survivors, Hades, Cult of the Lamb, Hollow Knight, Loop Hero, Disco Elysium, Minecraft, and Undertale
The Empathy Machine, pitched by Rebecca, which includes Heaven's Vault, Firewatch, Stardew Valley, Project Zomboid, Untitled Goose Game, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Wedding Witch, Dredge, PowerWash Simulator, and Strange Horticulture
The Indiescovery, not confusingly at all pitched by Liam, pre-loaded with Return of the Obra Dinn, What Remains of Edith Finch, Balatro, Rimworld, Deep Rock Galactic, Hotline Miami, Slay the Spire, Journey, Satisfactory, and Hypnospace Outlaw
It's all down to you now, listeners, to let us know whose dream machine you think has the best launch line-up and/or who made the most compelling case for their pitch! The poll is open for two weeks, so I'm sure we'll be reacting to the results in a couple of episodes' time.
Now, we had so much fun recording this episode that two hours just flew by before we knew it, and so we've elected to skip What We've Been Playing this week because frankly if you've made it this far into all the madness then you've probably listened to us natter enough.
That being said, it wouldn't be an episode of Indieventure without a quick run-down of our current hyperfixations, so hang around for just a few extra minutes if you want to hear us enthuse about the TV series Agatha All Along (Rebecca), the novel Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (Liam), and the recently-released indie game Neva (Rachel).
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!

#26. Trick or Treat: AAAventure Halloween Special

Happy Halloween Indieventure listeners! With the serendipitous launch of this episode on the spookiest day of the year, we couldn't resist the opportunity to peer into a parallel universe and imagine what life would be like if we became the thing we fear the most: yet another podcast dedicated to the biggest games everyone's already talking about. That's right: it's time for AAAventure (pronounced as scream-venture, with an apology in advance to headphone users).
 
But horror mother Rebecca is at the helm and because she can't just be normal ever, there's a bit more to today's discussion than a dry recounting of our favourite AAA games. No, instead the three wyrd sisters (yes, Liam counts) of Indieventure are collaborating on building a Frankensteinian monster of a AAA game by stitching together all the tropes that we love most about big-budget blockbusters. Fear not, though, because we're also brewing a handy banishing potion out of all the most cursed items we've found in indie games, just in case things get out of hand.
 
Of course, it being Halloween means that there are officially only two months left of 2024, so it's time for another update on what we've all been playing ahead of those all-important GOTY picks. Rachel has been enjoying unique dialogue puzzler Great God Grove, Rebecca has also been getting her word on in typing-based action-RPG Cryptmaster, and Liam has come to the conclusion that UFO 50 might be deserving of about 50 GOTY noms all by itself.
 
And, even though it's been a weird episode, we end with the familiarity of hyperfixations. Rachel's is a bit melancholy: PLAY magazine, a print outlet she's written for extensively, was officially shuttered this month, so she's been reflecting on the good times. Liam chooses to highlight Party House, one of the games that make up UFO 50, as really something special. And Rebecca's been working on her review of Life is Strange: Double Exposure, which naturally has brought up a lot of feelings for our resident LIS fanatic.
 
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury, and it's a testament to his talents that it still sounds great even though we've messed with it a bit for this episode as part of the whole spooky goof. You can find Ollie on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can find us at indieventurepodcast.co.uk or wherever you listen to podcasts, and can now join our brand-new Discord!

Episode 25: Happy 1st Birthday, Indieventure!

Believe it or not it's been one whole trip around the sun since we released the first ever episode of Indieventure! And to celebrate, we've opened up the mailbag once again to answer your listener questions.
Ever wondered how we find out about exciting upcoming indies to talk about on the podcast, or which indie video game we'd most like to see get the tabletop treatment? Maybe you're curious as to our respective favourite games on the late lamented indie machine that was the Nintendo 3DS — or want to hear us go off-topic once more while we debate which Ace Attorney case would make the best stand-alone game? All this and more will be revealed, including an incredibly cursed final question that must be heard to be believed.
This episode isn't really about any games in particular… don't worry though, here's a handy summary of the titles we touch on for all my list goblins out there! This episode is an opportunity to fill your earholes with some lovely (or not) discussions of Against the Storm, Boyfriend Dungeon, Braid, Citizen Sleeper, Control, Dredge, Gunman Clive, Harold Halibut, The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories, Monster Prom, Paradise Killer, A Park Full of Cats, Peggle, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, Severed, Slice & Dice, Steamworld Heist, Still Wakes the Deep, Stray Cats in Cozy Town, ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area, and Wilmot's Warehouse.
And, in this episode's pre-GOTY round-up of what we've been playing lately, we take a trip down false-memory lane with UFO 50, an 8-bit console that never was; discuss whether inventive perspective-flipped dating sim The Crush House is being held back by a broken in-game economy; and reach a surprising consensus on recent body horror streaming hit Mouthwashing.
We end as ever with our latest round of hyperfixations! Rebecca has been reading Jacqueline Wilson's Think Again, Rachel has a new reality TV obsession in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Liam has gone further down the Resident Evil rabbit hole than even he ever expected to get with The Mercenaries 3D.
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.

Episode 24: The best free indie games money can't buy

The last quarter of 2024 is somehow already upon us, and while it's definitely too early to be putting up the Christmas decorations (bombastically side-eyeing my local pub there), it is the time of year when many of us stop buying so much stuff for ourselves so we can write wish lists, and/or start saving up our hobby money to spend on the people we love instead. Which makes this a totally seasonally appropriate episode and not an excuse for Rebecca to launch a thorough examination into one of her many special interests: free-to-play games.
The free-to-play model has quite a few negative connotations associated with it, not entirely unfairly; but the Indieventure gang are here to make the case that to dismiss all F2P titles is to ignore the wide range of what's on offer in the space, especially amongst indie games. To that end, prepare for a big old chat about our favourite free indies, including Battle For Polytopia; Butterfly Soup; Doki Doki Literature Club; If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers; Indigo Park; Interview with the Whisperer; Lily's Well; Marie's Room; Max Gentlemen; Our Life: Beginnings & Always; Pineapple On Pizza; Samsara Room (by Rusty Lake); Simulacra: Pipe Dreams; Slice and Dice; Start Again: A Prologue (prototype prequel to In Stars & Time and not technically free it turns out, but very cheap and just generally germane to the conversation); South Scrimshaw; Sucker for Love: Prelude; Supermarket Simulator: Prologue; and the mobile port of Vampire Survivors.
Two things of note here: one, this is maybe the first time we've dedicated significant podcast chat to the subject of indie mobile games specifically; and two, everyone who feels like we're constantly trying to bankrupt them with wishlistable titles, rejoice! This episode doesn't need to cost you a penny.
Unless, that is, you decide to keep listening to our new temporary segment! With GOTY voting rapidly approaching, we've decided that it's not enough to check in with what we've all been playing every couple of months, and instead we're going to start updating you on all the cool stuff we've been checking out in every episode. Rachel and Liam have both had their professional reviewer hats on to check out The Plucky Squire and Shogun Showdown, respectively; while Rebecca — fashionably late after several months dedicated to playing hefty AAA games for her day job — has finally arrived at Thank Goodness You're Here, which turns out to be brilliant! Who knew?!
As ever, we end on hyperfixations — and would you believe it, we've all been playing some video games? Rebecca has finally completed her three-year-long mission to play all 10 visual novels in that iconic series about gay lawyers, having just wrapped up the recently-released Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. Liam keeps the Capcom hype train chugging along with his love for another of their latest game preservation projects, the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. And you'll be pleased to know that we're all being very on-brand, because Rachel has been playing Frostpunk 2, which may be one of the very few city building simulators out there to actually narratively justify getting a sequel.
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.

EXTRA: The power of scope, sustainability, and intent with Strange Scaffold's Xalavier Nelson Jr.

Welcome back to Indieventure EXTRA, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry.
In this episode, Liam was joined by Xalavier Nelson Jr., the creative director at Strange Scaffold, an indie studio responsible for hits like El Paso, Elsewhere, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator and An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs. Joining the industry as a journalist at age 12, this BAFTA-nominated creator has worked on over 100 games over the last eight years.
Xalavier spoke to us about scope, sustainability and the power of intent.
You can find Xalavier on Twitter as well as TikTok, or you can find out more about his work over at the Strange Scaffold website.
Enjoy!
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.

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.