Since I do a weekly roundup of indie games I get excited about and have seen a couple people express frustration at discovering new stuff, I thought I would list all the ways I hear about new games. In no way is this meant to be the “best way” to find them, it’s just my current process. Hopefully you’ll discover a couple of neat things from it and add it to whatever you do to discover cool games. Please don’t get mad if I left your thing out, this was all off the top of my head and there’s way better uses of everyone’s time that being mad at a blog post. But if you do know of other neat things, please leave them in the comments so I can follow along too!

Every once in a while there’s discourse online about indie games coverage and how there’s not enough people talking about them on sites but there really are a lot of places putting in the work and covering them despite it often meaning that the page gets less views than if they were to talk about the big releases. So if you’re one of those people, actually support the places doing the work! Share their posts when they cover indie games on social media and discord channels and if you can afford to, give them money on ko-fi or patreon. They can’t keep covering these games if their articles and videos just go into a void.

Blogs

Blogs are still alive and well in 2023! Every morning I check my RSS feed reader to see what people have posted in the last day. It beats the hell out of constantly checking social media to make sure nothing has been missed too. I use Inoreader, which is a free online reader that tracks what I’ve read no matter what machine I use.

Bobbins’ Olde Tomb Of Videogames is a weekly indie game roundup with more of a focus on arcade games and remakes of retro stuff but it covers it all really. It’s incredible stuff and is what inspired me to pick up my regular blogging about indie games again after taking a break from it.

Indie Tsushin is a blog focused on indie games from Japan. It regularly posts about games I never heard of and also has a lot of great interviews with game developers. Lots of great videos by them playing these games too!

Podcasts

Indie Mixtape is a podcast where the host Ty and a guest discuss what indie games they’ve played lately. The episodes are about 30-60 minutes long and cover a variety of games. It was originally a part of the site Uppercut, which I dearly miss, but I’m glad that Ty is keeping the podcast going. It’s available wherever you download podcasts.

Party of One is a tabletop rpg podcast where the host Jeff and a guest sit down to play a tabletop rpg in one session. The show dumped Dungeons & Dragons a while ago for much better games and it’s truly the best place to discover indie ttrpgs. I can’t imagine people have time to listen to every episode, but consider looking through previous episodes and checking out the ones where the games sound interesting.

It’s also very likely that there’s a podcast or two for your favorite genre of games. Since I am an adventure game enjoyer, I’ve discovered a lot of great games through the Adventure Games Podcast over the years. The show highlights a lot of great indie point-and-click adventure games and interviews with the people who made them. I don’t really follow strategy games much anymore but Three Moves Ahead is a show that has been covering them regularly for over a decade now.

Social Media

Even after deleting my Twitter account, I still find social media to be a great place to hear about various games. There’s game devs across all the places I use (Mastodon/Bluesky/Instagram/Tumblr/Cohost) so it doesn’t feel like I’m missing anything by not using Twitter anymore. And if a dev is only posting on Twitter/X, which is now a far right hate fest, we’re probably better off not being aware of them anyway. Obviously your mileage may vary on this one since social media is incredibly exhausting and most people probably only have the capacity to be on one or two platforms.

One account I’ve enjoyed following is Indie Games of Cohost, which is an account that regularly posts about recently released indie games and interviews with game devs. I believe you can follow Cohost accounts using a RSS feed reader but I’m not completely sure about that so you’ll have to dig for that answer.

Discord has also been a place where I’ve heard about many games. Obviously it’s not for everyone and it’s barely even for me, but I’m in a few game dev communities for people local to me and this has been the only way I’ve heard about the games being made in my area. There’s plenty of general indie game focused discord channels too.

Indiepocalypse

I’ve posted about it so many times now but Indiepocalypse has been a great way for me to discover games and developers I would never hear about at bigger games outlets. It’s a monthly compilation zine with 10 games per issue. Even if you cannot afford to buy any issues, the Itch pages for each issue list all the games and link to the developer pages. There is also a podcast called Indiepocalypse Radio where the host talks to different game devs every week.

Itch.io

Obviously an indie games store is going to be a way I hear about new games, but the best way I’ve discovered games through there has actually been by following lots of game devs and then regularly checking the feed. The feed will show me anytime a dev has published a new game, and it also shows me when they rate a game 5 stars or add a game to a collection. I can then check the collection to see what games are similar to it.

Video

Of course there are people on YouTube and Twitch that play indie games. I don’t follow as many as I should but two that I enjoy following are LotusLovesLotus on Twitch and Dirigitive on YouTube. Both are great folks that have introduced me to a lot of cool games and don’t have the stereotypical Twitch streamer energy where they yell a lot, which I am not into.

So that’s everything I do at the moment to discover new games, or at least what I can think of. Let me know of other neat outlets in the comments!