Episode 5: Our favourite indie games of all time

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 [e-mail], or by chatting to like-minded individuals about PC gaming over in our Discord.

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