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(+3)

There are many, if you dig around. One of the problems is that websites that review indie games can be very much like indie games themselves in that they're usually small, specialist, hard to find and- because they exist 'for the love', they often come and go very quickly. 

Often the best place to go to is websites specific to a genre or region. Our upcoming adventure game, for instance, has had coverage in Adventure Game Hotspot, przygodomania.pl and Quest Time (a Russian site). Also, there are individual reviewers  such as FutureCopLGF who posts videos of the best Newgrounds games each month, there are microbloggers, forums, small collectives who enjoy playing indie games with friends,  sites that enjoy indie games and do something different to promote them (like your own website! Thank you for covering Five Day Detective by the way ;) ), there are podcasts like Save Your Game with Pushing Up Roses, or the Adventure Games Podcast, there are thousands of individual Twitch streamers and Youtubers.

Essentially, there's a tonne of great indie stuff out there and the scene's alive and well, but it often takes some finding. I'd love for websites like itchio to do more to help give a platform for people who cover their games- maybe a specific forum? As this helps us all :)

Those are some good links there, got any more? I haven't had much luck finding sites that post text reviews of real indie games. I have found a number of real indie blogs that post reviews of big releases, but even those are difficult to find. I will look into a genre-specific search, like you suggested.

I'd love for websites like itchio to do more to help give a platform for people who cover their games

That would have been fantastic.

(+2)

The best thing to do- I find- is to google games of the level of indieness you want and see where they appear. For instance, if you search Dragonsweeper (which is a simple but very addictive browser game released on Newgrounds), you'll get sites like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Kotaku, daily.dev and Thinky Games. 

That is good advice.

Well said. On Steam "indie" is a genre. On Itch and other places, that is not enough. You need to go for specific nieches. It also levels the ratings and expectations. One just cannot compare a hobby developer's two day effort for a jam to games like Darkest Dungeon.