Cassette Beasts Preview - Pokemon Plus 1980s Equals Impeccable Vibes
When I sit down to preview Cassette Beasts, the dev starts to list ever-popular turn-based RPGs that prove there’s still life in the genre. Among the many titles, Pokemon is conspicuous by its absence. It makes sense to not invite the comparison (though less sense when the same dev tells me later that he doesn’t feel it has much in common at all, which it clearly does). Pokemon, for all its flaws, remains universally beloved. It’s untouchable, as many catch ‘em ups have found. Cassette Beasts has not come for the crown, but it still hasn’t missed by much. This is the most inventive catch ‘em up I’ve ever played, and it’s now amongst my most anticipated games in a stacked 2023.
Cassette Beasts’ unique gimmick is that it uses cassette tapes. The fact some of our younger readers might not know what they are makes me want to scoop their hearts out with a melon baller, but for those of us who remember when music came in plastic boxes, there are lots of loving references. Healing, for example, is done via pencil. If you don’t get it, ask your parents. Your player character starts off with one cassette beast, who they are able to transform into when they listen to a cassette. When they encounter other beasts in the wild, they catch them by recording them on a blank cassette, though it’s not like a Poke Ball. Instead, during the two or three turns you’re recording them, the more damage you do the more likely you ‘catch’ them.
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Describing the mechanics isn’t really the selling point of Cassette Beasts though. The game just has the right vibe. For all the preview itself avoided the P word, the game is intelligent in its tropes and inversions.
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