REACTION - The Triple-i Initiative 2025 was another varied and well paced slice of indie talent
Cutting through the guff.
By Jonathan Garrett
10/04/25
The great challenge facing any independent developer, big and small, is carving a meaningful enough audience that your likely new IP has room to capture hearts and minds in a manner that ensures sustainability. Digital storefront curation typically prioritising larger publishers, marketing budgets that rapidly balloon, and an exceedingly crowded marketplace will be issues facing any indie dev trying to make a name for themselves.
Thankfully, the Triple-i Initiative, a coalition of developers from across the lands, banded together last year to host, in their own words, a show with “no extra fluff, no ads, no host, just games”. Earlier today, the 2025 edition of said showcase just dropped, and it was gratifying to see a similarly broad and software focused barrage of quirky and arresting new games.
It was all but inevitable that Keighley produced events like Gamescom’s Opening Night Live and The Game Awards would bloat to a sort of MTV like scale and act as the mainstream access point for folks checking out world premieres. The format with Triple-iii ensured minimal guff with no fighting off adverts for curved Samsung monitors in-between reveals.
There was a pleasingly eclectic mix of titles that we’re planning to deep dive on in the days and weeks ahead. Sloclap’s Rematch, a completely unlikely follow up to Sifu, really caught our attention. There were a number of indie titles announced or re-revealed for Game Pass, and things like the solo dev produced Void Breaker really impressed with their focused ambition.
This is a format that needs to be studied and preserved long term, because giving independent developers a platform where their games aren’t relegated to a montage or a press release is incredibly important if the wider industry is going to stay vibrant and healthy. We’ll have more coverage of everything from this years Triple-i Initiative, so keep it locked to Burly Bird Media.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
