Design Your Next Indie Game with These Podcasts

I know this may seem a little off. Video games are such a visual medium with a lot of coding and technical skill craft. Not things that can be easily learned through a podcast. That’s why I wanted to find the perfect video game development and design podcasts that actually teach indie game developers how to build, design, and market their games. 

Whether you’re at the very beginning stages of coming up with a game idea or figuring out how to debug your code and perfect your level design, this list will cover it all. I’ve broken this article up into two sections. There’s the art section for the technical aspects of building your game because what is excellent code if not art? Then there’s the business section for the game designers needing to understand how to work and market as an indie game developer. 

The Business of Being an Indie Game Developer

The game development and design podcasts featured in this section will go beyond simply teaching you how to work and act as a professional indie game designer. They will also give you resources on building your game, getting work in the industry, and how to design games your players will love.

Elite Game Developers Podcast

The Elite Game Developers Podcast is run by the people behind Elite Game Developers. The show offers interviews with industry professionals in various roles within the game development and design industry. What the show tries to help listeners get a grasp on is finding success in building and running a successful game company or team. As an indie game developer, Elite Game Developers Podcast teaches you how to run your indie game company in a sustainable and intelligent way. One of my favorite episodes that interests me as a hobby game designer is their episode with Simon Hill about “How to Develop Games Differently.” Instead of focusing on the design side of building games, Hill and Joakim Achrén, the host, talk about how to approach bringing games to players. 

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The Debug Log

Like the Elite Game Developers Podcast, The Debug Log features interviews with industry professionals, though they focus more on triple-A games than solely indie game designers. The Debug Log is both parts business and art with episodes ranging from where to start in game design, optimizing performance in your game, and worldbuilding. With over 100 episodes, the folks behind The Debug Log get into a wide range of game design, development, and marketing principles where they intersect with education, accessibility, and community. When I first heard of The Debug Log, I thought the game design podcast would highlight debugging problems. I wasn’t disappointed at what I found in the informative and, often, hour-long episodes. If you comb back through to the episodes from back in 2015, you will find a treasure trove of resources for designing with the game engine Unity.

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GDC Podcast

If you’re an indie game designer like me, then you’ve dipped more than a toe into the plethora of resources from GDC, the Game Developers Conference. Going to the Game Developers Conference isn’t as accessible to many indie game designers out there. Still, GDC makes it a bit easier for designers and developers to see and hear the lectures from the conference. Through the GDC Podcast, indie game designers can catch some of the lectures and workshops from previous conferences. While most of the lectures currently available focus on bigger-picture narrative design and the business side of indie game development, there are a couple of episodes leaning more toward the design side. I wish there were more episodes and topics covered, but it is a newer podcast from 2019 with new episodes still coming out. It gives me hope that the GDC Podcast will eventually be just as expansive as its other resources. 

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Think Like a Game Designer Podcast

Based on an extremely informative game development book for beginners of the same name, Think Like a Game Designer Podcast is hosted by the author and game designer Justin Gary. Aimed more toward the game designer who wants to go from indie to the traditional side, Think Like a Game Designer Podcast is an interview-style podcast where the host brings on game designers, developers, and publishers to discuss parts of working in game design and development. The episodes cover a wide variety of topics, with a few main subjects per episode they go more in-depth in. There aren’t many technical episodes, but there are tons of episodes to help indie game designers learn how to market and network their games and build careers in the game industry. 

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Read more: Every Super Smash Brothers Fighter as a Podcast (UPDATED 10/5/21)

GameDev Loadout

Like, Think Like a Game Designer Podcast, GameDev Loadout focuses on teaching indie game developers and designers how to build their games and careers in the game industry through detailed interviews with industry professionals. The host asks questions surrounding the guests’ careers, schedules, and design habits to give listeners a well-rounded view of how professional game designers and developers work. There are a fair number of episodes specifically on player mentality and getting your player more engaged with your game and building a game design team. These episodes are beneficial for indie game designers looking to understand where the player fits in the game and how to find the right people to help make their game more than scribbles on a page. GameDev Loadout was a long-standing game design podcast with more than 100 episodes. Unfortunately, GameDev Loadout stopped airing back in 2020, but there’s always hope for a new season coming out. 

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Indie Game Movement

Indie Game Movement is an indie game developer podcast focusing on covering topics related to business and marketing. There are interviews, deep dives, and tutorials to help developers figure out how to get their game in front of more players, investors, and publishers. Like the title of the indie game podcast suggests, Indie Game Movement is all about empowering indie game designers and developers. Though Indie Game Movement just released a hiatus update on their page, listeners still have access to the back episodes. A few episodes that stood out to me were “How to Crush Your Steam Marketing with Bruno Laverny” and “How Indie Devs Can Understand and Influence Consumer Behavior.” Since the show is hosted by Andrew Pappas behind RenGen Marketing—an indie game marketing community and education hub—the episodes from Indie Game Movement surrounding marketing are packed with actionable tips on how to get more players and revenue. 

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The Art of Being an Indie Game Developer

This section is all about the technical, coding, and design side of being an indie game designer. If you need to debug your level design or figure out how to make your enemies scarier and your narrative design tight, these indie game design podcasts will guide you in becoming a better designer. 

Clockwork Game Design

Clockwork Game Design is where indie designers go to find in-depth tutorials and discussions on designing and coding the mechanics of their games. The host teaches through his own personal history of indie game development and interviews with professionals within the field about the importance of smooth design. For a newcomer to game design and development, I appreciated how accessible Clockwork Game Design is by giving an overview of the topics they cover. Because of the indie game design podcast’s setup of having episodes featuring both professionals in the field and his own experiences in game design, it offers a similar learning experience to the indie game design podcast Design Doc, further down on the list.

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Level Design Lobby

Level design is a skill that not every indie game designer possesses. For those needing to sharpen their level design skills and get a firmer grasp on making each level just as compelling, engaging, and well-crafted as the last, Level Design Lobby offers a masterclass in level design. They pull information and tips from interviews, movie scene analysis, and so much more to provide countless resources, examples, and tactics to approach level design. Level Design Lobby doesn’t just cover level design, though, the indie game design podcast also teaches game designers about narrative design, working in the gaming industry, and other aspects of game design. A recent episode released at the beginning of October, “Reading Materials #45”, is a reoccurring episode where the host shares specific resources to help further listener understanding of game design. 

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Game Dev Field Guide

Game Dev Field Guide is one of my favorite indie game podcasts on this list. I started listening to Game Dev Field Guide a few months back and have found the podcast incredibly insightful and helpful at getting me to think about specific mechanics and features in games. Made by an indie game designer for indie game designers, Game Dev Field Guide aims to offer listeners a comprehensive and community-driven approach to becoming a better game and system designers. The host goes into technical design and coding subjects surrounding designing assets, animation, and a slew of other topics. I really love the Game Dev Field Guide because each episode comes with some homework to help take the lessons covered even further. Listeners share their responses to the assignment in the very engaged and encouraging online community. Homework that covers the topic in an exciting and comprehensive way is then shared on the podcast for others to learn. 

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RPG Design Panelcast

RPG Design Panelcast is a game design podcast featuring panels from game developers and designers on various topics. The panel format is a great way to hear diverse perspectives on game design and mechanics. And like the title suggests, this indie game design podcast is explicitly focused on role-playing games. Started in 2012, the panels originally came from a wide range of conventions and places, but as of 2016, most are from that year’s Metatopia, the game festival. One of the longer-standing indie game design podcasts on this list, RPG Design Panelcast, has covered just about everything when it comes to role play game design. And yet, they are still releasing new panels that introduce nuanced topics related to design—check out “Heartwarming Gaming During the Plague Times”!

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The Game Design Round Table

If you are an indie game designer of tabletop, board games, or card games, The Game Design Round Table is one of the few indie game design podcasts on this list that is made for you. The folks over at The Game Design Round Table bring together both video game and tabletop game designers to discuss designing both types of games but with more focus on tabletop over digital. Indie game designers can learn how to prototype, design, and build their games through interviews and roundtable or panel-like discussions with the hosts and their industry professional guests. One of the greatest aspects of The Game Design Round Table is their back catalog. If you’re new to the indie game design podcast, then you have over 200 episodes to catch up on and more coming each month. 

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Design Doc

Design Doc is an indie game design and development podcast where listeners learn through the hosts making their own games. I believe since the beginning of the show, the hosts have made two games where they take listeners on the journey from idea to marketing and release. Each episode goes into specific systems, mechanics, features, and narrative design choices the hosts/game designers have made for the game they are designing. Unlike a fair amount of indie game design podcasts on this list, Design Doc had the cozy feeling of listening to friends talk about the creative projects they love. That type of setup may not work for some, but if you prefer to learn through someone else’s close experience, then this is the podcast for you. 

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Level Design Podcast

Like the Level Design Lobby, Level Design Podcast is aimed at indie designers who want to learn from professional-level designers how to create better levels for their games and players. Level Design Podcast takes game design professionals from the most successful and groundbreaking level design games out there and asks them how they do what they do so well. They offer listeners an inside peek into how top level designers work, what the level design industry is like, and insight into level design theory. Like a few indie game design podcasts on this list, Level Design Podcast straddles the line between a technical podcast and a business one. While they don’t outline exactly how to build better levels, the theories and examples of how professional level designers have created their levels gives listeners a starting point to begin with their own level design.

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Nerdlab Podcast

Another indie game podcast for card game designers is the Nerdlab Podcast, a podcast hosted by an indie card game designer on his journey to build his next game. Along with his tutorials and inside looks at his process, he also interviews game designers, both indie and triple-A, to help other indies design better games. There’s a mix of technical and business episodes to cover all concerns indie game designers may have. Nerdlab Podcast was like a cross between Design Doc and Clockwork Game Design, though less technical than both. There aren’t a lot of indie game design podcasts out there right now that provide as detailed tutorials for card game designers as the Nerdlab Podcast, which is why it’s another favorite to recommend.  

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Board Game Design Lab

Another excellent indie game podcast for board game designers is Board Game Design Lab. Through interviews from professional indie game designers, Board Game Design Lab gives listeners insightful episodes on specific topics related to building, marketing, and designing more ingenious board games. It was great to learn some new game design techniques from the diverse guests appearing on the podcast. A few episodes that jumped out and were of huge interest to me were “Designing Roll and Write Games with Joe Hout” and “How to Design Trick Taking Games with Fertessa Allyse.” Though I don’t build board games, hearing these designers talk about their journeys in game design and how they approach design was absolutely fascinating. Board Game Design Lab has been around for a few years now, so there are way more episodes of interest for listeners to check out. 

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One of the things about designing games as an independent or on a small team is that you’re in charge of your growth and education. While these podcasts will help you bridge some patches in your education, they won’t do everything. These indie game design and development podcasts have more resources outside of their episodes, and some even offer communities where indie game designers can interact and learn together. 

So don’t forget to support whatever indie game podcast you end up learning something from any way you can.