Indiescovery

It’s episode five of Indiescovery and we'd like our listeners to get to know us a little better, so this week we've picked our ultimate favourite indie games and then had a big old natter about them. Talking about all our favourite games would take us into 3023, so we’ve kept it to two games per person, which actually wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be.

To kick off the episode, we introduce the ✨Indiescovery Vault✨ a magical place locked behind a huge, golden door. It's a wonderful place where only the most prestigious indie games may go as selected by the Indiescovery team. The six games we’ve chosen for this episode will have a coveted place in the vault, but more will be added as the podcast goes on. This is the first of many episodes where we chat about our favourite indie games, so the vault will be opened again in future episodes.

The first of our picks is Paradise Killer. Liam chose this murder mystery about gods and demons set on a tropical island dripping in vaporwave aesthetics. Even though she's not played it, Paradise Killer is very much a Rebecca game (it's basically a match made in indie game heaven) so Liam and Rebecca will keep poking her until she plays it.

The second game is Rebecca’s pick, Monster Prom, a game that introduced her to both the indie gaming scene and visual novels. This one is an Indiescovery contender for a standalone episode, one were we all jump into multiplayer for a few rounds then talk about it. If that format is something you’d be interested in for future episodes then tell us by leaving a comment!

A game that sits snuggly in its number one spot on the RPS top 100, Return Of The Obra Dinn sails gracefully into our picks, nominated by Rachel. Turns out the RPS treehouse really like mystery games, so this detective game about a lost ghost ship from the 1800s was destined to be in the vault at some point. Let's put it this way: any game that forces you to learn the difference between a gunner, purser, helmsman, and bosun (and we're not even mad about it) is worth playing.

We’ve time travelled back in time with Liam’s second pick, Hypnospace Outlaw. This is a game we’ve chatted about on the podcast before, but it bears repeating: Hypnospace Outlaw is awesome. Set during the wild heyday of the online world, this ‘90s internet simulator is a gem of a game, so into the pit it goes (Yes, we have a pit in our vault. It was requested by Liam. It’s basically Liam’s pit. Blame Liam.).

Rebecca’s next pick is Firewatch, and wow did she almost have Liam and Rachel in tears talking about it. The feels were out when we were chatting about this one, as we get into the game’s brilliant characters, lovely visuals, and heart warming themes. We're not crying, you are.

The last of our six games is Kentucky Route Zero, which was Rachel's pick. She really loves this game, and when choosing her two games for this episode she didn’t hesitate in choosing KRZ. A magical realist adventure, this American road trip follows a group of drifters as they search for an ethereal highway that runs through an underground cave system beneath Kentucky. It’s a little weird, but also perfect (in our humble opinion).

The squad then quickly list off other indies that crossed our minds when choosing our six (some of which we’ll definitely get into in future eps) and then we dive into our hyperfixations. Rachel's been watching hours and hours of the RPG show Dimension 20, Liam has been watching Brutalmoose’s calming mall and microwave meal reviews, and Rebecca introduced us to mushroom ketchup, which sounds amazing?? Did you know that mushroom ketchup existed? Every day is a school day, apparently.

Indiescovery is a podcast by Rock Paper Shotgun. Our theme music is by Dylan Sitts, specifically the songs Tahoe Trip, Pool Sticker, and Express Check-in. You can contact the podcast by chucking an email to [email protected], or by chatting to like-minded individuals about PC gaming over in our Discord.

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It’s episode four of RPS’ indie podcast Indiescovery and this week the team got into the Valentine's Day spirit and had a long chat about our favourite indie game romances (any excuse to gush about how hot the characters are in Hades, really). We get gabbing about our favourite game OTPs, the fabulous representation of queer romances in indies, and then finish with a cursed (not horny) Cosmo-style dating quiz.

Just as a bit of a heads-up, we do spoil some of the romantic developments in the following games. No major plot spoilers, but you’ve been warned!

Our initial frolic into the realm of video game romances are the first games we remember playing with romance options. For Liam that would be Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life on the GameCube, the ninth entry in a series that is considered the great great grandpappy of all farming sims. Rebecca’s is the Gabriel Knight series for PC, a game that she remembers being quite sweet in amongst the murder-mystery-ing. For me, I lament about villagers moving away in the Animal Crossing series, which will never stop feeling like you've just been broken up with, and my frustrations with having to choose either Yennefer or Tris in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - of which my choice is NEITHER.

We then jump into our favourite romances in indie games. Liam kicks us off with Gregg ‘Be Gay, Do Crimes’ Lee and Angus Delaney from Night In The Woods. Rebecca’s OTP is Anna and Ashely from Simulacra, a surprise pairing in what is an incredibly creepy horror game. Rachel’s vote goes to Red and her giant sword boyfriend from Transistor, which leads to the gang chatting about their favourite dateable weapon in Boyfriend Dungeon.

We then get into a bit of chatter about representation and how indies have recently led the charge for queer romances outside of the hetero norm. There’s been a great deal of progress in a short amount of time for LGBTQIA rep, so we dive into why that’s the best thing ever.

To sign off on all our romance hot-takes, Liam has prepared a saucy (but, again, not horny) dating quiz where Rebecca and Rachel each get coupled up with an indie game through hilarious - and completely cursed - multiple choice questions.

This episode is a little more loosely structured, so here is a quick list of other games we mention in passing: A Year of Springs, Monster Prom, Firewatch, Unpacking, Bustafellows (and otome games in general), Mystic Messenger, Stardew Valley, and a big ol’ chat about Hades.

For this week’s hyperfixations, Rebecca has started Danganronpa 2, a dangerous decision for someone who became completely obsessed with the first game. Rachel is diving straight into the deep end in cosmic horror fishing sim Dredge, and Liam is trying to recover from the emotional devastation of finishing the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead (hopefully listening to Paramore’s new album is helping, bud).

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Wow, is it episode three of RPS’ indie podcast Indiescovery already? How time flies! In this episode, the Indiescovery squad reccomend a handful of awesome demos from this spring’s Steam Next Fest for our lovely listeners to check out - six demos to be exact! We recorded this episode on a Friday instead of our usual Wednesdays so, yeah, major end-of-week vibes in this one.

After a little general chatter about Steam Next Fest and our own personal histories with demos, we jump straight into our recommendations!

Rachel's first chosen demo is It’s A Wrap!, a smart puzzle platformer where you use different tracks of an editing suite to affect each level and then need to guide your character through the perfectly timed chaos you’ve just coordinated. Her second pick is Super Adventure Hand, a slightly cursed action-platformer where you play as a disembodied hand. This demo also prompted the three of us to go completely feral over the game’s questionable disembodied limb lore (which yes, is definitely a thing in the game).

Liam’s picks include Cook Serve Forever, a fast-paced cooking demo that shot his anxiety levels through the roof…in a good way(??). He follows up with a much more relaxing pick, laid-back city-builder Outlanders, which looks incredibly soothing. This is also part of the podcast where Rachel may or may not admit to thinking the characters in Outlanders look tasty and then spiral into how she wants to eat Wallace and Gromit.

Rebecca kicks off her picks with All Of Us Are Dead, a post-apocalyptic zombie horror visual novel which is the most on brand Rebecca pick ever. Her second is 2D detective game SherLocked: Escape Room Adventure, where you must use your wit and cunning to help Sherlock deduce his way through a series of puzzling rooms. Curious, indeed!

We end the episode with our current hyperfixations! Liam has been punching robot baddies to the beat of Hi-Fi Rush, Tango Gameworks’ surprise January drop. Rebecca has been on a medieval murder mystery spree by playing Pentiment and then reading The Name Of The Rose (quick side note: American mystery-drama show Monk is totally not about, like, actual monks.) Rachel has been gawking at the gorgeous animation of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, a Shrek spin-off that is pretty good, actually.

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Proving that our ability to organise recording an episode wasn't some sort of one-off fluke, the Indiescovery crew are back! Indiescovery Episode 2: Electric Boogaloo begins with a nice little chat about what we've all been playing since we got back from our Christmas hols. Rebecca extols the virtues of Tiny Life, a pixel art spiritual successor to classic The Sims; Liam likes similarly retro-styled Nightmare Of Decay because it's like Resident Evil, but somehow even gorier, and also puts in a good word for upcoming open-world parkour-platformer Ballistic Zen; and Rachel has lately been all about magical coming-of-age '90s nostalgia trip A Space For The Unbound.

After that little catch-up we take a whistle-stop tour of our most-anticipated indie games expected to release in 2023. During this trip we take in the promising sights of Anemoiapolis: Chapter 1, Inescapable, Dreamsettler (and its spinoff Slayers X), Gunbrella, Romancelvania, Terra Nil, and Thirsty Suitors. We conclude the discussion with a big love-fest for Demonschool because, as it turns out, we're all very stoked for Demonschool.

In our latest collection of hyperfixations, Rebecca has a full-blown case of the post-game blues after finishing the whole Ace Attorney Turnabout Collection. Liam has been reading Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, a novel beloved in the industry right now for its compelling insights into game development and the rarely-spoken-of love that exists between true collaborators. And Rachel unboxes her copy of the Frostpunk board game live on air, accompanied by excited audio description.

Indiescovery is a podcast by RockPaperShotgun.com. Music by Dylan Sitts: the songs are Tahoe Trip, Pool Sticker, and Express Check-in.

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Back in December, the Indiescovery crew got together to record a Christmas-themed test episode for our new podcast, with the idea of launching the show properly in January. Well, in the end we loved our "unreleased pilot" so much that we decided to release it anyway. Christmas episodes in mid-January may not be the norm, but this kind of random silliness is surely well in the eclectic spirit of indie gaming.

We begin by highlighting our favourite indie games of 2022, with Rebecca bringing us retro horror point-and-click Lily's Well, Rachel picking sci-fi RPG Citizen Sleeper, and Liam staying true-to-form by talking about rogue-lite bullet hell Vampire Survivors.

Our seasonal section on the topic of stocking stuffers brings a selection box of lovely little indie games to your attention. Featuring brief summaries explaining why you should definitely ignore your family over the festive break in favour of playing A Little To The Left, Chop Goblins, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, Paradise Marsh, Mount Your Friends, and A Building Full Of Cats.

We close out the episode with a run-down of our current hyperfixations. Rebecca can't wait to tell everyone about a fanmade Life Is Strange dating sim called Love Is Strange she saw on Itch.io. Rachel can't get enough of live-action social deduction series The Traitors on BBC. And Liam is obsessed with TikTok account @therealpovcook, documenting the daily working life of a diner cook living somewhere in America.

Indiescovery is a podcast by RockPaperShotgun.com. Music by Dylan Sitts: the songs are Tahoe Trip, Pool Sticker, and Express Check-in.

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