Started playing a few indie titles on PC, or at least titles that I would not normally be able to find without digging a bit (Sea of Stars, Hollow Knight, Garden Story, etc). Finding games that are made by smaller studios is a little (not much, but a little) harder than finding “Top Sellers” on Steam. I have tried Steam’s “niche” Recommender, which has helped find some cool titles.
However, I am wondering if there is something that would be equivalent to what E3 was, but for Indie titles? Either some online showcase that doesn’t rely on the Steam Curator system, or even something hosted in person with actual demos like E3. Does anything like this exist?
EDIT: Thank you for the answers! Steam Next Fest, the YouTubers listed below (thank you again!), gamescom, and itch.io all work great for what I was looking for.
Youtube channel “Second Wind” has excellent indie game coverage.
They do “Bytesized” for short reviews of new games. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUBKwq0XD0uesOmUb2GTsc6rVp0mILcOY&si=lB8ZOIy3hraaMyG6
Also they have “Hidden Gem” where they stream an older indie game that went under their radar.
Plus most of their other stuff is pretty on the indie pulse.