• Price: $19.99 USD for main game, $6.99 for “Pier of the Unknown” DLC, $1.99 for “Cosplay Pack” DLC
• Developer: Bytten Studio
• Publisher: Raw Fury
• Release Date: May 25, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by Sandbox Strategies on behalf of Bytten Studio and Raw Fury. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

I have fond memories of listening to cassette tapes in my parents’ cars on the way to school back in the day. Apparently, they were invented in 1962 (!!!) – I thought they were invented later than that. Bytten Studio decided to bring the cassette tape to the forefront in Cassette Beasts, a monster taming game where you transform into monsters using tape recordings!

Starting the game, you get to customize your character by choosing:

• Name
• Pronouns
• Skin color
• Eye color
• Hair style + color
• Accessories i.e. glasses, beard, etc.

After making those decisions, the story begins as you wash up on an island. As if your luck isn’t bad enough, you then run into a monster. Fortunately, a girl comes to your rescue, providing you with special headphones and a cassette player that allows you to transform into any beast you record on tape. To get your “starter” monster, you’re asked to decide between 2 aesthetics. (The one you don’t choose now can be acquired later in the game.)

Once you’ve placed a tape in your cassette player and transformed, it’s time for some turn-based combat! As you are just starting out, the monster you transform into will have limited abilities at first. There are 14 beast types including the usual types such as fire or water, but also some unique types like plastic, beast, astral, or glitter.

The way they handle typing is really cool. The moves you use can buff, debuff, or transmute the enemy depending on their weaknesses. For example, using a less effective fire move on a water type will actually buff the water type with a healing steam.

Conversely, using a water move on a fire type “extinguishes” it, which decreases its stats. And if you use a fire move on a plastic type, that melts it and turns it into a poison type. It’s just really interesting how certain enemy attacks can benefit you in some way!

Your beasts can use a variety of ability types beyond their own typing; each ability costs between 0 and 10 action points (AP) to use. You get to have one other transforming party member with you, and each party member automatically receives 2 AP per turn.

Sometimes you may want to use the weaker moves that cost 0 AP so you can build up enough points to use stronger abilities. I liked that I wasn’t constantly worrying about conserving move points between battles, since your AP always start at zero. And the cassette tape-style move menu was a fun way of continuing the cassette theme!

After completing your first battle, you find out that the island you’re on isn’t located on Earth. No one’s been able to leave the island for a century. For some reason, there hasn’t been much societal development (“Where’s the Internet,” cry the citizens of New Wirral), and no one has found a way home after all this time. It looks like you may have to be the one to look into it.

They give you a bit of background on the island of New Wirral, but after that it’s up to you to decide what you want to do, where you want to go, and when you want to do something. It’s very non-linear. You can prepare for the battles ahead by purchasing additional cassette tapes and healing items from the café in town.

There are also vendors who sell the game’s equivalent of TMs in the form of active or passive ability stickers that you can apply to tapes. I absolutely love how players can customize their monsters’ movesets as much as they like (as long as a move is compatible with them) by peeling and placing stickers on tapes.

You can also get ideas on what to do next by listening to rumors in town. Cassette Beasts is definitely heavy on exploration elements. Some environments remain inaccessible until you have solved puzzles and/or recorded specific monsters with abilities that help you to climb or swim your way around. (You don’t have to keep them in your party.)

I really disliked the cooldown period for dashing, and wish we could run for as long as we like, but a cooldown period made sense for things like gliding. Thankfully, once you reach certain areas you can fast travel across the map.

As you run around the island, you’ll work on completing main quests as well as side quests. In the process, you’ll run into new friends who you can fuse with to become one powerful monster in battle. Completing their quests and battling with them helps strengthen your bonds with them, and when your friendship is ready to level up you can do so by taking a break at a campfire or at the café. They’ll tell you more about themselves every time your friendship grows stronger.

Strengthening your friendships means that you’ll be even stronger when you fuse together. Impressively, there are over 16,000 possible fusions in the game!!! You can equip 1 of the 128 monster tapes on your character and whoever you’ve chosen as your companion. When the fusion meter fills up, you can choose to fuse (the meter stays full in between battles if unused).

Fused monsters get 4 AP per turn, have combined stats, and are capable of using moves from both tapes. I was very pleasantly surprised by the lack of turn limits for fusion! I also appreciated how they made things more challenging by allowing human opponents and wild monsters to fuse too. I did wish we could record monsters while fused, though.

Wild monsters appear directly on the map, and may chase you around once they’ve spotted you. You need to be careful because if a monster form loses all of its HP, its tape breaks and it will need to be repaired before you can use it again. Human characters and monster tapes have separate HP meters. When you try to record a monster, the character doing so will revert to their human form. Unfortunately, if the human loses HP, there’s no way to heal or revive them unless you go and rest somewhere.

On the other hand, when you try to record a monster, it can’t run away or be killed. Each time you aim a cassette tape their way, it’ll show you how likely you are to record that monster. Damaging them increases your chances of recording them, but the monster damaging the recording character decreases those odds. If you inflict status effects on the monster, even if they seem to lose all of their HP, they’ll stay alive as long as you continue recording. That’s definitely a relief!

Once you’ve successfully recorded some new monsters, it’s time to train them up! Leveling them up involves increasing their stars – up to 5 – instead of actual levels. I do think this makes the game less of a grind. When a monster hits 5 stars, you can “remaster” (evolve) them. Remastering results may vary based on conditions such as the time of day, equipped stickers, or some simple “either-or” questions.

At some point you may run into a monster that looks like its glitching on the map. That’s an indicator that you’ve encountered a bootleg, a monster variant with different coloring and typing than the original. I actually found my first bootleg monster in the first hour of playing, so I was pretty happy. I really like the bootleg system because you can find different versions of the monsters you like in any of the other elements.

You’ll battle a lot of wild monsters and the occasional “trainer,” but Bytten Studio differentiates Cassette Beasts from other monster taming games with the inclusion of several groups of antagonists for you to confront. Face off against cult members, scammers, and powerful Archangel enemies. And naturally, they have their equivalent of gym leaders with 12 ranger captains.

I had a lot of fun exploring the island, assembling my team of monsters, and discovering secrets. I also enjoyed earning achievements. The story could feel a little disjointed at times, and it could have been fleshed out more in my opinion, but it definitely has some intriguing elements to it.

I also could have used a little more direction or at least some hints on what to do. (I had to look up a couple of quests and how to access some areas.) But other than that I think there is a lot to appreciate about the game’s creative and expansive take on monster taming.

I love the art for all of the monsters, and the designs for bosses like the Archangels are eerily cool. Some of the silly monster names made me laugh. The soundtrack is fantastic, and it’s even better when the songs with lyrics play during special battles. There’s also partial voice acting in the game. I liked the characters that join us in battle – especially Felix the artist – even though there isn’t too much detail on their backgrounds.

Once you’ve completed all of the main quests and the credits roll, there’s additional content for you to check out. You unlock custom game modes after beating the game for the first time, which allows you to choose if you want tapes to stay broken, if defeat results in a game over, if monster locations and starter tapes are randomized, etc.

The ranger noticeboard quests also become available in the post game. There’s a lot to do in Cassette Beasts, and my play time took me about 40 hours. That’s not including the DLC content, covered below. And look forward to online multiplayer at some point in the future!

8.5/10

DLC: Pier of the Unknown

This DLC apparently unlocks after defeating 4 Archangels. You’ll hear about a mysterious rowboat, and when you get on board it takes you to Brightside Pier. The quest at the pier is a “spooky new adventure” with new costumes and 12 additional monsters (increasing the number of possible fusions). You get to explore the attractions at an amusement park.

But first you have to find enough prize tickets for all 3 attraction passes. This mostly involves hitting some switches or finding hidden buttons to unlock the chests containing the tickets. It may have been more interesting to have actual mini games to earn the tickets and even some prizes.

You have to solve puzzles in each attraction to get to some of the bosses (of which there are 4). I started the DLC later in the game, so I was level 90 while the bosses were level 55. You may not want to wait until the end of the game if you like more of a challenge. The Brightside Pier experience is fairly short, taking about 2 hours to complete, but you can continue to access the venue and record its monsters. One of them becomes available for random quests back on the island as well.