Indieventure

• #38. Games we forgot to cover in 2024!

  The end of April also marks the official end of the previous year's games calendar, as all of the Big 5 games industry awards shows (Golden Joysticks, The Game Awards, DICE, Game Developers' Choice, and the BAFTAs) have now been and gone. Which is useful because it means that here at Indieventure, we get to draw a line under 2024 at long last and turn our attentions firmly to the future of games released in 2025 – which, naturally, we'll be legally allowed to talk about until April 2026. It's the way of things. But before we wave a fond farewell to a year that actually ended four months ago – and don't you dare remind us that we're totally undeniably ⅓ of the way through 2025 already – we're wrapping things up here by ceremonially rolling up the red carpet Indieventure-style. If this isn't your first trip around the sun with us, you'll know that mostly means "Rebecca gets very excited about award show stats", but this year we have some insider insight as well, since Rachel actually appeared on the BBC as part of their BAFTA Games coverage! If industry accolades chat isn't your thing, don't worry, though, because we've also taken this opportunity to revisit some indie games from 2024 that we really wanted to cover but – mainly for reasons of there being so many of the things – didn't get around to until now. Stick around for belated chats about Anthology of the Killer, Arco, Arctic Eggs, Echo Point Nova, and Loco Motive, as well as brief swings by Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (again) and Vampire Therapist… plus more Blue Prince because we simply can't help ourselves. Last but not least, this episode's batch of hyperfixations sees Rebecca trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance of falling hard for historical girl power pop opera Six: The Musical and sci-fi romance gacha game Love & Deepspace during the same two-week period; Liam confirming what we already suspected about Strange Scaffold's latest game, survival horror match-3 mashup Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 (it's really good!); and Rachel discovering that The Rehearsal: Season 2 is completely unlike The Rehearsal: Season 1 and makes for strange and compelling watching. 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!

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• #37. Blue Prince group review: Home is where the GOTY is

  Not to get too big-headed or anything, but I think it's fair to say that here at Indieventure we knew about Blue Prince before almost anyone. The demo that sparked obsessions in both Rachel and Rebecca over the past few months has now transformed into 2025's most highly-rated game release so far, garnering early GOTY predictions not just within the indie space, but even when compared to this year's roster of Triple-As (which let's be honest, is so far pretty muted due to everyone and their mum being afraid of launching up against GTA6). So, naturally, we're dedicating this episode to Blue Prince now that it's out. And once again, we have a minority report situation on our hands, because while Rebecca and Rachel remain captivated, Liam has some thoughts that go against the general consensus on this game. But it's us, so of course we have a kind and respectful discussion that only goes off the rails through incidental chatter. There's only so much you can say about a game that's really best encountered with minimal spoilers, though, so we use Blue Prince as a jumping-off point to talk about houses in games generally. It sounds straightforward enough, but when you stop to think about it, a quite staggering number of video games touch on domestic spaces – for everything from humanising characters who might otherwise be difficult to identify with, to creating a sense of dread as the familiar turns sinister. We talk about a lot of games – including quite a few illegal AAAs who provide some vital context for the discussion – but for those of you who like to keep track, the indie game houses we touch on here include the essentials like the ones found in Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch, as well as The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, The Crush House, Devotion, Go-Go Town, Layers of Fear, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Lost Records, Mouthwashing, PowerWash Simulator, The Room, Rusty Lake, Stardew Valley, Sucker for Love, Tangle Tower, Thank Goodness You're Here, Unpacking, and Visage. As always and ever, we end on our current hyperfixations. Liam has been playing Promise Mascot Agency – which launched on the same day as Blue Prince and will surely be coming up on the pod again – and has been as delighted by it as you'd expect the person who inducted Paradise Killer into the vault to be with its long-anticipated follow-up. Rebecca has been reading Elphie: A Wicked Childhood, the latest book by Gregory Maguire that staunchly refuses to make concessions to the stage/film version of Wicked compared to the much weirder original novel series that she's loved for decades. And while it's maybe not her usual genre, Rachel has been surprised to find herself really, really enjoying newly-released tower defense RTS Cataclismo. 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!

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• #36. The Vault: Best Indies from the First Half of the 2020s

  I don't want to alarm anyone, but the 2020s are already half over. This horrific revelation doesn't have many upsides, but one of them is surely the fact that – with five years of this rotten decade under our belts – we can start to think a little bit about the current shape of the gaming landscape, and how it'll be remembered when we inevitably arbitrarily lump it all together in another five years' time. OK, turns out that wasn't such a cheerful conversation either, but you know what is a place of loveliness and positivity? The Indieventure Vault. Yes, that's right, today we're once again opening the blast-proof doors to go over our very favourite indie games of the first half of the 2020s, at the end of which each of us selects our own #1 pick to rest safe in the Vault forever. The list we come up with is as eclectic as you'd expect, featuring as it does a blend of personal favourites and acclaimed best-ofs including Among Us, Boyfriend Dungeon, Citizen Sleeper, Cocoon, Death's Door, Immortality, Max Gentlemen Sexy Business, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, Thank Goodness You're Here, Umurangi Generation, and Vampire Survivors. But only three from that shortlist can be submitted into the prestigious Indieventure Vault. Who will it be? (Insert reality-TV-coded pause.) I mean, come on, obviously you're going to have to listen to find out, I'm not going to give the big reveal away just like that. We end as always on our hyperfixations, and in what may actually be a podcast first, we're all about video games in our free time right now! Rebecca's new favourite is still under embargo, so all she can really say at the moment is that she's really been enjoying Blue Prince (check back next episode for more on that!). Liam sings the praises of the wonderful co-op playground that is Split Fiction while also taking the auteur to task for the many, many issues he has with the plot of Split Fiction. And Rachel loves Two Point Museum, because as we all know she's a lady of impeccable taste and it's simply great. 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!

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• #35. What is a cosy game? A love letter to gaming's gentler side (feat. Wanderstop)

  Sakes alive, we're 35, and in this episode we've been inspired by the recent release of Wanderstop to turn our attention to the nebulous topic of cosy games. Is "cosy" a genre? A theme? A vibe? Are all cosy games broadly the same, or is it just a blanket term that can refer to any game without a central combat mechanic? Is "cosy" even still a valid classification now that we've moved so far past all major new titles being, essentially, Doom with a different paint job? All these questions and more will be debated enthusiastically by the Indieventure trio, even if we entirely lack the ability to form a consensus that provides you with definitive answers. What we can manage, however, is to rattle off a bunch of cosy game recommendations, drawing from personal favourites and cosy classics (and indeed both) to come up with a list that encompasses indie titles as disparate as Stardew Valley (naturally), Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Dorfromantik, Dungeons of Hinterberg, the Frog Detective trilogy, House Flipper 2, Lil' Gator Game, Ooblets, PowerWash Simulator, Proteus, Tangle Tower, Tiny Life, TOEM, Wilmot Works It Out, and Frostpunk (no, really!). We also have a crack at an informal group review of Wanderstop, which has elicited an impressive array of thoughts and opinions among a trio of people who normally tend to kind of agree on most things. Who thought what? You'll have to listen to find out, but I can reveal it's a good chat. (And if you haven't yet listened to the recent Indieventure Extra episode where Liam interviews creators Davey Wreden and Karla Zimonja, here's the link to that!) Finally, as always, we end with our current hyperfixations. Liam is still absolutely caning through an essential catalogue of new and recent game releases, and has this time turned his attention to Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest in Capcom's long-running series about invading the habitats of majestic creatures and turning their hides into some fancy pants. Rebecca is trying to live by Wanderstop's example and be kinder to herself, which mainly involves taking a lot of naps at the moment, but she also throws in a couple of bonus recommendations for anti-burnout narratives in the form of Travis Baldree's high fantasy coffee shop novel Legends & Lattes, and of course the evergreen Pokémon Concierge miniseries. And Rachel's circled back to Mindhack, a dystopian visual novel about neutralising enemies of the state with beautiful electronic flowers that painfully rewire their dissident thoughts. You might remember this one from a couple of years ago, and it's good to see it still steadily making its way through early access, and now including four chapters of a planned eight-slash-nine. 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!

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  1:55:24
• EXTRA: Spilling the tea with Wanderstop's Davey Wreden & Karla Zimonja

  Hello and welcome back to Indieventure Extra, our bonus series where we interview key members of the games industry. Liam recently sat down with Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide) and Karla Zimonja (Gone Home) to chat about Wanderstop, their recently released game about a burned-out warrior attempting to find solace by running a tea shop in the woods. If you've yet to play Wanderstop, there are no spoilers to be found here, so don't worry. Davey and Karla mainly chatted about how the game came to be, what it's like to make a game about burnout that is actively burning you out as you're making it, as well as the challenges - and the benefits - of making a narrative-led game within the cosy genre framework. We also spoke about Boro. Best Boy Boro. Here is the TTRPG about parrying that Karla mentioned in the Hyperfixations section. 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.  

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