Indieventure

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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 again, it's me, the Ostrich that Indieventure hires to write episode descriptions while Rebecca is away. Well, I say hire. Liam actually keeps me in a big glass cube in his garage, and whenever my services are required, he uses a large hammer to release me. The entire process is inefficient (and don't even get me started on how much he's spending on glass per financial quarter), but he has started patting me on the head and telling me how good I am at writing words, so who am I to complain? Much in the same way I am released from my prison in the event of an emergency, the Indieventure trio were forced to smash the proverbial glass that surrounds the listener mailbag format this week, following a last-minute embargo change to a game they were all planning on reviewing instead. That game was Demonschool, which was pushed back to November following the surprise announcement of the release date for Hollow Knight: Silksong. The episode begins with a brief discussion about Team Cherry's upcoming mega hit, especially how much it has disrupted the indie game release schedule. Is Silksong the indie equivalent of Grand Theft Auto 6? That's maybe a question they answer here. I can't remember. Maybe listen to the episode yourself instead of expecting me to do it? You fool. You oaf. Then, the trio answer YOUR questions! Who is the hottest Peggle character? What does a successful indie podcast look like? What are your earliest memories of gaming? You'll find out the answers to these (and more!) in this section. Finally, it's Hyperfixation time. Liam is channeling Big Dad Energy after watching The Naked Gun, Rebecca has been listening to The Lion's Roar by First Aid Kit, and Rachel has been playing The Drifter. Anyway, I'd best be off. A DPD van just delivered an enormous glass cube, and Liam is now standing outside of its door, tapping his watch and looking impatient. Speak soon! 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!

Okay, technically there's still a month left before the official end of summer, but who doesn't get a bit wistful towards the end of August? It's probably a hangover from those school summer holidays, even though the Indieventure trio – along with most of our listeners – left those days behind longer ago than we'd like to admit. Still, taking the sting off significantly is the fact that Summer 2025 has already been an excellent season for indie games. So good, in fact, that it was quite the struggle to narrow our collective list down to just seven titles we want to talk your ear off about today. Expect more updates in the coming episodes as we consider our regrets over the ones we cut for time, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy our enthused round-up of what we've been playing recently, including BUSTAFELLOWS season2, Jump the Track, Look Outside, Squeakross: Home Squeak Home, Sword of the Sea, and Tiny Bookshop. Plus – for only the second time ever – your intrepid Indieventurers actually managed to coordinate our schedules outside of recording to play a co-op indie game together! We'd love to do this more often, but alas, adult life is a harsh mistress. But, on the other hand, it's bloody PEAK! Yeah, of course we had to play PEAK. When the time rolls around for hyperfixations, Rachel immediately figures out that she can cheat and sneak another excellent summer indie in from her list by talking about Cipher Zero. Rebecca, unsurprisingly, has heard the siren call of Tears of Themis – something everyone predicted she'd love because it's literally an Ace Attorney-inspired otome game made by HoYoverse – which she's found compelling if (spoiler alert) a little less lovable than she'd always expected. And slightly more surprisingly, Liam has also fallen for the allures of a gacha game… but it's Pokémon TCG Pocket, which is allowed. 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!