Indie-spensible news.

Hello and welcome back to yet another of our Indie News Roundups. Every Thursday we bring you a few choice stories that did their best to slide by unnoticed, the little scamps. This week, we’ve got existentialism and football, noir detective bears, and a bunch of mutants, so let’s crack on.

Football Drama is a cauldron of poetry, philosophy, and football (obviously)

FIFA would have you believe that a manager’s career in football is all team management, ignoring your scouts and youth academy, and spending all your FIFA coins on new pairs of football boots that you’ll instantly forget about (I know I’m not the only one). But developer Open Lab is bringing us a look at the introspective side of management with its narrative-driven strategy game, Football Drama.

If you enjoyed the decision making of FIFA’s The Journey, then it sounds as if Football Drama is going to offer a similar kind of game, albeit a scaled-down version. The game, according to Open Lab director Pietro Polsinelli, is inspired by the literature surrounding the sport rather than Alex Hunter yelling at a journalist. You’ll be playing as Rocco Galliano, manager of a struggling team, as you juggle team management with a personal crisis surrounding Galliano’s murky past.

The football itself is confined to turn-based gameplay where your available actions during a match are laid out as cards that you play each turn. It sounds like a fairly ingenious way of approaching the football game conundrum, and while the beautiful game is a big part of Football Drama, Polsinelli admitted that he’s never been a fan of the game, instead explaining that the game “was inspired by the poets, writers and movies depicting football’s epic and poetry, as we wanted a voice in gaming that would take that same perspective.”

Football Drama will arrive on Steam on September 18.

Bear with Me lets you play as a gritty teddy bear detective

Episodic detective game, Bear with Me, has released its complete collection this week, with all three episodes joined by a prequel called The Lost Robots – bloody hell, that’s adorable.

While Bear with Me offers a supposedly heartfelt story full of clever one-liners, growing friendships, and a looming threat, the most important thing about the game is that you get to play as a teddy bear detective.

The three episodes of Bear with Me sees duo Ted E. Bear and kid-detective, Amber, searching for her lost brother Flint. The complete bundle of the game also includes a prequel episode, The Lost Robots, which sets up the events of the main game – like any other prequel but with a fucking teddy bear that’s also a grizzled detective.

Bear with Me’s complete collection is available now on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and the Switch.

And Finally… Mutant Year Zero’s Seed of Evil expansion brings a load of post-game stuff

Developer The Bearded Ladies has released the first expansion for Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. The Seeds of Evil expansion offers up a fair bit of post-game shenanigans for players to use as an excuse to spend a few more hours with the game.

The fire-breathing moose, Big Khan, is a new character for the DLC, which also introduces a new story where this rag-tag bunch of mutants will have to fight a bunch of roots that have taken over people’s minds. Cool.

At the time of this story, Seeds of Evil is only available on Steam to buy individually (£13/$15) though PS4, Xbox One, and Switch players can pick up the Deluxe Edition of Mutant Year Zero, which includes the base game and the expansion. Digital versions of the DLC will be available on consoles next week, according to publisher Funcom.