Indieventure

Indieventure Podcast
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  • Video Games
  • Every two weeks

Join three friends as they embark on an adventure to discover the best indie games! Hosted by Rebecca Jones, Liam Richardson and Rachel Watts. Episodes released fortnightly!

  1. 4 hr ago

    #62. The State of the Modern Life Sim (feat. Paralives)

    The gang are all back together at last after our various summer hols, and we're happy to welcome the return of Liam after his absence from our last episode. Naturally, our first order of business is to get him all caught up on what he missed during the mid-year check-in, so we begin with a quick-fire chat that takes in Mina the Hollower, El Paso Elsewhere 2, Denshattack!, Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?!, The Mermaid Mask, and – not indie, but unignorable given who we're talking about – Resident Evil Veronica. Then it's onto the main topic of this episode and, unbelievably, despite being co-created and co-hosted by a lifelong obsessive Simmer, it's taken Indieventure almost three years to put together an episode dedicated to the life sim genre. However, the early access launch of Paralives a few weeks back has given Rebecca the excuse she's always needed to go off at length about her excruciatingly detailed knowledge of life sims, how they work, how they're made, and how the genre has developed and adapted to the changing gaming landscape over the past quarter-century. Many thanks to Liam, Rachel, and you, our lovely listeners for indulging this semi-interactive TED talk, and be sure to check out the Sims Community interview quoted in this episode! Naturally you can expect some illegal AAA chat here too as it's more or less impossible to discuss Paralives in context without regularly referring back to The Sims franchise as well as InZoi; but don't worry, we also circle back to perennial Indieventure favourite and underappreciated indie life sim Tiny Life while we're at it. There might even be a Stardew Valley cameo in there somewhere, too. And like a cooling dip in the pool during Britain's third consecutive heatwave, we round off with our latest hyperfixations. One of Rachel's favourite manga series – The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All – is getting an anime adaptation early next year soundtracked by Nirvana, so there's plenty to get excited about there already even if we're six months away from seeing the thing itself. Liam has broken a bit of a dry spell in his gaming enthusiasm by getting very, very invested in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. And Rebecca has achieved her pledge to "sit by a pool and do nothing but read a stack of books for two weeks", having read nine novels on her recent break with a reading list comprised of authors Mie Takase, T Kingfisher, KJ Charles, Becky Chambers, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, Owen King, and Chuck Tingle. 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!

    1hr 46min

  2. 25 Jun

    #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!

    2h 7m

  3. 11 Jun

    #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!

    1hr 52min

  4. 28 May

    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-b******t 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!

    1hr 57min

  5. 14 May

    #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!

    1hr 50min

  6. 30 Apr

    #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!

    1hr 45min

  7. 16 Apr

    #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!

    2h 2m

  8. 2 Apr

    #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!

    1hr 52min
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About

Join three friends as they embark on an adventure to discover the best indie games! Hosted by Rebecca Jones, Liam Richardson and Rachel Watts. Episodes released fortnightly!

Information

  • Creator
    Indieventure Podcast
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    76
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Indieventure

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