Indieventure Indieventure Podcast

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.

It's been a while since the Indieventure crew did a group review, but here we are at last once again, this time having a proper gander at newly-released (by the time you hear this, anyway) stop-motion narrative adventure game Harold Halibut. Drawing its inspiration from mid-20th century TV — namely an unusual blend of hard sci-fi and gentle animated comedy shows — Harold Halibut proved somewhat divisive among the Indieventure trio, although we find it so hard to argue with each other even when we disagree that once again we end up negotiating a reasonable middle ground. What can I say, sometimes we're so wholesome it's sickening. But thanks to our lively exchange of ideas, there's a good chance that you'll come out with a well-informed impression of whether Harold Halibut is a game for you or not.
 
This episode also contains a mini review of Pepper Grinder, a new pixel-art 2D platformer and the latest outing for the linchpin indie publishers at Devolver Digital. Does it have cronch? Stay tuned for the verdict from our resident pinecone-munching expert.
 
And last but not least, hyperfixations! In a break from tradition, Rebecca doesn't want to talk for long about how much she's been hooked on The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood of late, because she's literally been playing it for our discussion next episode and that would defeat the point. This leaves Liam and Rachel plenty of time to swap reality TV recommendations: courtesy of Liam we have Channel 4's latest social experiment The Underdog: Josh Must Win, while Rachel presents us with South Korean game show The Devil's Plan on Netflix, which turns out to have been way better than the second season of Physical 100.
 
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.

Little known fact about the Indieventure crew: we're all pretty tiny. Like, 5'9" at the outside, the types who really need a tall friend to accompany us to the supermarket so we can reach the interesting condiment jars that always seem to be hanging out on the top shelf. So, short queens/king that we are, of course we stan a short indie game. How could we not? Just like us, they're perfect the way they are, taking up exactly as much space as they need to make their point without feeling the need to be all imposing (on your precious free time).
Moving on from that metaphor before the thread gets lost entirely! We've separated this episode into time-based categories, starting with indies that take two or three hours to complete, including Anemoiapolis, Birth, Industria, Lily's Well, Nuts, Penko Park, Pupperazzi, A Short Hike, Umurangi Generation, and A Year of Springs; as well as various games in the Devcats and Rusty Lake franchises.
Next up are some of our favourite one-hour indies, like Chop Goblins, The Exit 8, and Morph Girl, as well as the individual games that make up the Frog Detective trilogy; Rusty Lake's sister series Cube Escape; and the early works of solo Birth dev Madison Karrh.
Squeezing our way down to indies in 30 minutes or less or your pizza's free (disclaimer: I do not actually have the authority to grant you a free pizza, sorry), it turns out we've got a surprising number of recommendations to offer in this particular bracket. We urge anyone who fancies playing a game from start to finish over their lunch break to check out David Lynch Teaches Typing; Dr Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald; Localhost; Pebble Witch; Pet the Pup at the Party; Pineapple on Pizza; Puzmo; Teenage Blob; or any of Deconstructeam's short offerings on Itch, with a special mention going to Eternal Home Floristry if you're too overwhelmed by choice to know where to start.
Finally, if you're looking for a miniscule indie game that can be played in just 5 minutes or so, look no further than psychological horror walking sim September 1999. And if your tastes run to indies so small they can only be viewed under a microscope, we end by recommending Morning Makeup Madness and Queers in Love at the End of the World, both of which last just 10 seconds.
Before we're done, though, there's time to have a quick chat about longer indie games nevertheless handily divisible into single-sitting runs, including Balatro, Deep Rock Survivor, Slay the Princess, Vampire Survivors, and (of course) the Monster Prom games.
We end, as ever, with our latest round of hyperfixations! It's a broad category this episode, which sees Rachel bingeing all three seasons of Netflix's adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events; Rebecca hooked on the recently-released fantasy/mystery novel "Voyage of the Damned" by debut author Frances White; and Liam discovering that YouTuber City Planner Plays is every bit as good as Bob Ross for some educational ASMR.
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic.

Let's be honest with you, dear listeners: the Indieventure trio are making this podcast in our spare time around our full-time day jobs and, sometimes, we simply can't find the time or just don't feel like writing a detailed script. Which is why, on this occasion (and at random intervals going forward) we've crowd-sourced our theme for this episode! We asked and you lovely people answered, throwing out some great questions that we were only too delighted to respond to in the form of our trademark lengthy rambles.
Ever wondered what everyone's first indie game was? Which indie characters we'd love to see in Smash Bros.? The indie game we'd most like to see get a movie adaptation? If we have any secretly shameful indie faves? Or whether we have any opinions on tabletop games? (Spoiler alert for that last one: turns out, we do.)
I mean, obviously there's a high chance you did wonder about all this, because we don't have that many listeners, so there's good odds that the person reading this right now did submit some of these questions. In which case: hi! And thank you! It's been a pleasure, and I can assure you that all these queries and more become the subject of lively discussions (if not yielding actual answers) by the end of the episode.
We finish as ever with our latest hyperfixations, and while this isn't a competitive section, Liam definitely wins by becoming absolutely obsessed with Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy of New Weird sci-fi/horror novels, a preoccupation that Rachel and Rebecca are only too happy to encourage since it turns out we're all big fans of the series. Rebecca, meanwhile, has a lot of good things to say about Re/Member, a Japanese teen horror film featuring not one but two time-loops that got absolutely slated in reviews when it came out on Netflix, but which in her opinion was close to 5-star quality (but then again, it is an extremely Rebecca-coded film). And Rachel has been playing a short but sweet (and surprisingly queer) indie mystery game: This Bed We Made, which sadly got a bit lost in the shuffle when it launched towards the end of last year despite great reviews.
And finally: you might have noticed that our music is back at long last! With huge thanks to Ollie Newbury for composing a bespoke theme for Indieventure that we can call our very own. Check out Ollie's work on Instagram if you want to hear more of his stuff, because he's very talented and cool.

It's a Leap Year, and the strange minds at Indieventure have taken this as a sign that we need to do a thematically appropriate episode about a gaming trope all three of us happen to love! Yes, since 2024 has an extra day, we decided to dedicate that sliver of bonus time to talk all about time loops. Trust us, it makes sense.
Because of the fluid nature of this discussion we don't limit ourselves just to indie games on this occasion, although they remain a heavy focus because, y'know, if there's a good theme out there then there's 10 great indies and a couple of solid AAs to every AAA that nailed it, right? In this episode we talk about a whole bunch of timey-wimey titles including Deathloop, The Forgotten City, Hades, Heaven's Vault, In Stars and Time, Layers of Fear, Life Is Strange, Outer Wilds, P.T., The Sexy Brutale, Slay the Princess, The Stanley Parable, and Ultros. We also touch upon a few other games that aren't technically about time loops but evoke similar feelings thanks to the iterative way you're encouraged to play, such as Frostpunk and Hitman.
We follow this up with a shorter discussion about how the shared experience of the pandemic has influenced storytelling in indie games in general, including but not limited to a notably increased use of the time loop trope; touching on 1000xRESIST, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Full Void, Goodbye Volcano High, In Stars and Time (again), Mediterranea Inferno, and Roman Sands RE:Build.
That's not even a comprehensive list of our favourite time loop games, and we could literally have talked about this for another several episodes. Sadly, unlike the inhabitants of a time loop, we need to wrap things up eventually — but not before we share our latest hyperfixations! Rebecca has rather unexpectedly finished Romancelvania, and extremely unsurprisingly recently re-watched the live action Ace Attorney movie; Liam has caved to Rachel's influence and begun watching The Traitors, and has also finished playing Stardew Valley (apparently that's a thing you can do?!); and Rachel has been watching True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of the acclaimed weird crime thriller anthology series which is finally back after a five-year hiatus.

This week's episode of Indieventure has a bit of a show-and-tell format, since it's been a while since we just checked in with the indie games everyone's been playing in their down time.
After our last episode on this February's Steam Next Fest, Rachel has mostly been playing loads more demos! Mech-pilot farming sim Lightyear Frontier has emerged as her most-played Next Fest demo this time around, and might even be poised to find its way onto the best-ever farming sims list of our resident connoisseurs of the genre. She also has a lot of good words for INDIKA, an experimental psychological adventure game examining religious orthodoxy — here's a link to the Polygon article we discuss at this point in the episode.
Never one to cruelly leave us without a recommendation for a great indie title we can play in full right now, though, Rachel has also recently checked out text-based horror game Home Safety Hotline. Long-time listeners will know that Rachel isn't always our biggest horror advocate, so rest assured that this one is pretty safe to play for anyone looking for a good creepy story, regardless of your comfort levels with some of the genre's more intense tropes.
Noted Valentine's Day sceptic Rebecca has nevertheless been in the mood for romance this month, specifically in video games that let her woo hot monsters. So she's been playing a few rounds of Doomsday Paradise, a Monster Prom-inspired multiplayer card battler that got a bit lost in the shuffle when it first released back in November. She's also revisited two monster dating mash-ups she previously bounced off of, Helltaker and Romancelvania — and quickly DNF'd one all over again while becoming hooked on the other this time around.
Liam, meanwhile, has been enjoying two very different roguelikes: early access city builder Roots of Yggdrasil, which sees a band of Vikings attempting to outrun Ragnarok by expanding their civilisation across the Nine Realms with the use of deck-building puzzles; and Go Mecha Ball, the twin stick shooter starring a cat piloting a mech through a pinball machine. You might remember we talked about the latter game before after playing the demo, which is when we first uttered the now-immortal line LIAM LIKE CRONCH.
In hyperfixations this week, Rebecca's obsession with the new Wicked movie trailer hasn't quite overtaken her desire to binge as much of the Pokémon anime as possible before Pokémon TV goes offline for good at the end of March. Rachel has recently visited the British Library's Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition, which leads to far too many good book, film, TV, and game recommendations to list in full here. And Liam has finally binned off The O.C. and started watching a TV show he'd actually recommend to others, namely the recent remake of Mr. & Mrs. Smith starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine.