Cassette Beasts

This is... Beautiful. Do you like Pokemon? Do you want to see a new permutation? Not the same, not a rehash, not a snake eating it's own tail, but a love letter, a competitor, a true rival? It has mechanical depth for those want tier lists, it has storylines with stakes both relatable and epic, it has characters that make you feel, a world you rent to keep exploring and understanding. God, the music and the music direction punch so far above their weight you'll feel a shiver run down your spine when you hear lyrics start. This is the kind of indie studio that makes gaming good.

pokemon but better, especially with how the monster types(?) are executed!!! its not just straight up 2x more or less damage, its synergies and status effects!! :D

The feel/vibe of this game is incredibly good! I'd suggest this over most Pokemon games any day. Fights feel fun and rewarding, and leveling up feels like it actually matters. 10/10 would play again!

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☑ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☐ Worth the price ☑ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☑ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10

Absolutely worth playing and probably one of the best creature collector games. Music, aesthetic, art, and characters are all incredible, the battle system is balanced and unique enough to be fun, the story is really good, there's just very little to say about this that isn't a compliment. Every once in a while you might get slammed in a fight or against a particular monster if you aren't prepared, but it's never unreasonable. This is less a criticism of the game itself and more of the isekai genre overall, but I will say the one thing I don't really understand is how not a single person on New Wirral (or in any other isekai type media) is happy in their new life and doesn't want to go back to their old one. To use this as an example, someone's thrown into New Wirral where there are these fascinating creatures and you can literally turn into one of them at will, and their immediate thought is "I need to go back to my 9-5 grind with the boss I hate where nothing exciting happens in my life". It would be nice to have the option to be like "I'll help you deal with the issues so we don't all die but no way, I'm not going back to my old life afterwards" rather than getting dropped in and immediately saying you want a way out. Other than that, which isn't really even a downside it's just something I never really understood about isekai type games, I cannot recommend this enough. It takes all the good parts of Pokemon and expands on them, drops a lot of the bad parts, and puts unique aspects in their place. A lot of creature collectors don't manage to do that.

Few games are as whole and unique as cassette beasts. This game seems like a pokemon clone but refines and improved on the creature collection formula so thoroughly that it breaks out of the genre conventions. It doesn't waste your time. There's no filler here. It's just an incredibly well made, well thought out game. In Cassette Beasts you find monsters, record them on cassette tapes, and become them for monster fights on an island called New Wirral. It's a simple premise, easily done wrong, but done excellently here. The artstyle and monster design is top tier, and I never feel like I'm playing a pokemon or digimon knock off. I seriously love so many of the monster designs and names. The mechanics of this game are great. The monster fights feature unique type interactions so it's not just water beats fire but fire can be doused by water and weakened, or water can be evaporated by fire and create a healing steam. There's an innate typing chart in the game that explains all the interactions. This kept fights feeling fresh and unique throughout the game as I explored the various interactions. There's so many ways to build viable teams and approach combat, especially when you consider that you can fuse your monsters. What's more is that this game is filled with a lot of quality of life features that I wish so many other games had. When you begin to catch creatures they can't die, and instead remain at 1hp if you're trying to catch them. I appreciate that so much. Moves are stickers that can be easily added or removed from a monsters move sets. Camp fires exist throughout the world for easy healing and team swapping. You can adjust ai intelligence and difficulty in the settings. There are many small but thoughtful details that make the game experience smoother and more enjoyable. Anyone can enjoy this game! There's a robust number of quests, partners for you to pair up with, secrets to explore and items to collect. There's so much to do and experience in this game, and so much of it feels purposeful. This game is easily a 9/10 for me. The only weak points are the writing is occasionally not great, some of the partners aren't as fleshed out as others, and while the monsters designs are great, the fusion designs (which i assume are procedurally generated) can be absolutely hideous. I highly recommend this game, and can see myself replaying it in the future. Bytten studios is a developer I'm looking out for in the future if they can keep this quality of game in future titles.

Game is really amazing with such comfy and invigorating OST. A good twist on the usual Pokemon-esque monster capturing adventure theme, some good RPG elements, and pixel art.

Reviewed after completing the story and reaching the credits. I tried a bit of postgame, but it felt like a grind. Pros: - Fantastic soundtrack. This is easily the highlight of the game. - Game looks great - Lots of monsters - An interesting story - Type advantages do more than just increased damage - Monster designs are fun Cons: - Level scaling is odd. I felt like I was super overleveled in the midgame, but felt very underleveled for the endgame and postgame - The ending to the story feels unfinished I would highly recommend this to any fans of pokemon who want something a bit different.

This game is great the game is a good way to play a creature collector without having to pay the $60 to play Pokemon. Witch I'am not at all comparing this game to Pokemon but if you need a game like this I think this is a better option. It has it own standing in this game genre. The gameplay is where it has a little bit of a grind to it but when has a RPG or JRPG has not had at some point some type of grind. But this game handle the grind pretty well not at one point in this game. I felt like I was to under leveled to fight a boss or just regular enemy's it link your level to the to you character so you could use a weak monster and still win a fight. and when it comes to evolving your monster that part is also pretty easy as well and exp is share so you can use you powerful monsters to evolve you weaker ones. and the bosses in this game are amazing with there crazy design and there ultimate attache and ability's that you have to work around. And there the usual captains or leaders that you fight. The music is really good in battle and out of battle. In Battle music can get a little bit annoying it only if you play for long periods of time because it the 2 to 3 songs for battles. But the music outside of battle is really go it just such a cozy soundtrack. I would listen to this track in my day to day life. the best part about this is that it is multiplayer and I play this with my friend and it was just internally different experience having two people control different monster is fun because leave more to do with you team.

Genually a really fun creature collector game on Steam. I do highly recomend it if you like the genera.

Very interesting game, it has a unique take on the creature collector genre, very worth you're money.

Everything about this game is honestly beautiful, from the characters, to the music, to the designs, to the story. It's honestly everything I wanted out of a creature collecting game and more

Love this really cute creature collector. A steal on the summer sale, and even at full price a fair deal unlike the failing former "A" trash companies who forgot how to make fun games and only know to slap huge prices on garbage with excessive invasive drm and lots of other spy and malware. Whoever did the song you hear in town is incredible, I wish we could set it to loop while exploring in options, so relaxing and lovely singing. Super high marks all around for this game, devs, music. Can't think of anything to complain on this one. Grab and enjoy!

Only like 30 minutes of gameplay but oh my god - the soundtrack is peak??? - the characters and design are so good - i want to marry kayleigh (WHO SAID THAT) - A thousand out of ten everyone should play this thanks

Really cool story, and a beautifully designed world. Honestly everything about this game is so captivating, a definite must play

Hey! Wanna listen to some tunes~? *Transforms into a rabbit with a street sign and proceeds to beat the holymoly out of a higher power with relationship issues* tldr: Game is fun, many options for strategy, great pvp and post game co-op, killer music and a lovely story thats sure to leave you wanting more. Bare with me here, i dont normally type out reviews like this so it might be a mess. all joking aside this game deserves far more attention than its gotten, an amazing soundtrack that spans from relaxing to Jams you can easily rock out too even outside of the game. the story is great especially if you love to theory craft, cant say much without spoiling but will say on my first playthrough each new boss felt like a brand new treat and obstacle to overcome with a plethora of interesting characters and creatures of which the artstyles are amazing to look at. Did i mention the "shinies" in this game also change the elements the creatures are, on top of the fact each of the 144 creatures have 14 different variants making so many combinations of play. the gameplay in my opinion is far better than that of pokemon, type advantage doesnt just mean "i hit for big number while you do small" each element advantage and disadvantage creates status effects both good and bad making you really want to strategize not just what you want to attack with and when but how you want to be hit as well. everything in the game is a Duos style combat with plenty of options to create tag team combos combined with that of fusing to dish out devastating finishers. my favorite thing definitely has to be the post game equivalent of a battle tower in which you can tackle either alone or with a friend leading to some very fun teamplay shenanigans for an RPG. not to mention PVP in this game is quite hectic and a blast to participate in, my only complaint is you cant change the music for pvp battles, not a big issue but man! to listen to these bangers while nuking your friends would be awsome! to close things up, i really enjoyed this game and its by far became one of my all time favorites.

Definitely one of my all time favorite games. The concepts and world building were excellent, and the battle system was really enjoyable and challenging. I love the whole concept of bootlegs and fusion, and overall I think the game handles them well considering just how many combinations there are. I also just really loved the music and the characters were charming. The game's setting feels dangerous and scary but at the same time welcoming and hopeful, which is great. So many games try to encourage community and human connection but fall short since the setting/characters fail to embody those themes, but Cassette Beasts did it pretty well imo. My only big complaint about the game is how so much good stuff is locked until the post game, like sticker fusion or even the Ranger Board stuff. I think those could have been unlocked earlier in the game while you're playing through the main story. However, still a great solid game regardless and I highly recommend it.

For the longest time, whenever I end up finishing any game, I feel satisfied at the end knowing it was fun but it's time to do something else. This game leaves an itch that the post game/dlc helps fixing but it's not enough. Don't get me wrong; everything about this game is peak: Battles, music, stickers, bootleg hunting, everything. I had a bit over 90 hours of gameplay out of this game, which is really good for the price. I had fun and I would reccomend this game to anyone that likes monster catcher. But The game is short. When I hit 30 hours, I could see in the distance of the quests the game slowly shaping up to lead to the end game content. I then procastinated and did everything I could to make the fun last. This procastination lead to shiny/bootleg hunting. The game mechanics promotes long playthrough. Sticker collecting and bootleg hunting especially, but the story is quite short in comparison. Even with this, It's clearly the best game I played in 2025. Not perfect but so close.

Love the mechanics, open world exploration, the character and monster designs are incredibly inspired. The Archangels and Companions are great. I was annoyed by some QOL stuff but community mods have fixed these (majorly, the companion keeping tape when switching)

This has to be one of my favourite creature collector type games. I really love the art (though the fusions leave a little to be desired), the world, the characters, and the mechanics! I really think they have something good going on here. If there's ever a Cassette Beasts 2 that focuses on refining the battle mechanics & gameplay, I could really see this system to be really interesting not just PVE but also PVP. I was going through a real rough time internally when I first played this game. It really helped me out and helped me focus again, affecting me personally pretty strongly. The town theme still to this day elicits an emotional response from me.

A very fun game with great music and a cute artstyle. The story is engaging, the fights are difficult enough to keep you interested all the way through, and the companion characters are endearing. My only complaint is that some of the menus are a little janky to use. Swapping out moves, for example, is a weirdly complicated process. You can't see the moves you have on your character and the ones stored in your inventory at the same time. I also find it a little annoying that gaining a new companion replaces one of the monsters on your team. But these are very minor complaints and it doesn't ruin the game for me at all. I've been addicted to this game for the past week. I've been unable to get the background music out of my head, and I don't even mind because the soundtrack is that good. If you like turn based combat games where you have to strategically build up a team with different combinations of abilities to defeat bosses, you will love this game.

Super fun! a lot like Pokemon, but better in lots of ways.

Easily one of the best creature collectors out there! The music is absolutely phenomenal, and overall, I’d give this game a well-deserved 9.5/10 — far surpassing most AAA titles. I highly recommend giving this incredible gem a try!

This combines a bunch of weird concepts together...like recording physical creatures on cassette tapes. Hilarious. Witty dialogue. Challenging but didn't take me too many extra tries to get past some tricky parts.

Cute romancable characters, nice "tapes"/creatures, great music, and unique systems for handling type effects that give the game more strategic depth

As someone who never played Pokemon games other than a few forays in emulators, Cassette Beasts is just the far more interesting and fun game. In addition to the co-op mode, the monsters are interesting, and the sticker system adds a lot of flexibility to builds. Plus, it has a kickass OST! Highly recommended if a fun lightweight RPG is what you're looking for.

Puzzles are great. Good references to things. Story is good, love the characters didn’t find one annoying at all. (I played this game on the switch first then got it on steam so I can stream it on discord) Music is peak The designs are great Game mechanics are intuitive and fun to mess with I really have nothing but positives to say about this game

This is honestly one of the best monster collectors I've ever played. It's so unique compared to the rest of the games in its genre. Which means I wouldn't call this a pokemon clone at all (even though I was looking for one to play). I'm definitely planning on putting more hours into this game. Please please please I urge you to try this game even if you were just thinking "Maybe I should play this". The graphics are amazing and the story is actually kind of fun. The beasts are pretty cute too. You will NOT regret it.

Plenty of choices, some difficulty, fun art style and the drawbacks are minimal. The soundtrack to this game is also great. 8.5/10

An amazing game with a banger soundtrack and cool gameplay mechanics. 10/10 i would reccomend.

I cannot recommend any game that has ear-raping UI sounds and nothing in the settings to lower or mute the volume. Worse thing ever. Not even 5 minutes in and it gave me a headache. Changed other audio volumes down but it didn't change the volume for the ui audio. Hell no.

I had high hopes for this game as a more complex Pokemon. In some ways it hits the mark. The types have advantages that are more significant than just extra damage, and I think that aspect is really neat. Some of the monster designs are really cool as well. I also love the concept of recording the monsters onto a cassette and channeling them for fights. Conceptually, it has a great idea. Graphics and audio are a take it or leave it situation. I don't think either are great, but it's not a factor into my thoughts on the gameplay, which I do not like. Battling has some fun concepts, but there's something about it that feels incredible sluggish, and overly challenging without it being rewarding. I may have missed it but I don't really understand the trainer level vs the cassette level, and to be quite honest, the capture method, while cool in theory, is not fun in practice. Battles feel slow and drawn out, but not in a fun strategic way. Then there's the open world, which is not fun to traverse at all. Navigating it is actively unfun. I can't stand being behind a big wall and not able to move the camera, and the platforming is far too abundant for how basic and unfun it is too try to jump and maneuver around the map. The story isn't good, neither is Pokemon, but this has a quirkiness that doesn't work for me while Pokemon is more grounded. I'm giving up after 9 hours. I am not enjoying my time and playing more won't change that.

seems a little woke to me but otherwise solid monster collecting gameplay though it's kind of hard to figure out whether its more like persona or more like pokemon

Pokemon but better. Co-op is a lot of fun, but Player 2 can't make a custom character. Instead, Player 2 plays as the partners you gather over the course of the story. Lots of variety with the beasts and the moves. I like that you can take moves off one beast and give them to another, but optimal management can get tedious and time consuming. Still, so far so good, and a lot of fun. The music is very good, and the art style is cute.

The artstyle and basic systems of the game are endearing, but quickly begin to overstay their welcome. The Song's available in battle are hype at first, but for a game who's central gimmick is adjacent to music you would think there would be a broader variety and greater depth there. My two biggest complaints are that the fusions are more ambitious in scope than in practicality. One of the selling points for me was a pokemon game with the fantasy of fusion digi-volving any of your chosen creatures, and while that is technically the case, there are maybe a dozen or so beasts whose fusion feels as cool, or imposing as it should, most of the time the fusions border on same-y and wakward, with a few being downright repulsive. They tried to hard to stick to cozy/indie/alt/creepy vibes, and never bothered to include anything cool, intimidating, or awe-inspiring. My second gripe is that of the levelling and attribute structure. I get that there's some customization to be had through the gym, but given that it only affects your primary character, and only allows certain minimum values, feels needlessly restrictive, at least for a solo experience. It also removes a lot of synergy in having a duo comp when your partner's skills are locked. Not to mention, many of the beasts stats feel a little too similar to each other to feel distinct. Plus you don't unlock the gym until pretty late into your exploration making your beasts not truly feel like your own until it's long since grown stale. A brief list of my other gripes include: -grinding for skills of higher rarity that actually matter is insane -Bootlegs as a mechanic should either be more reliable with more work (think battle chaining or sos battles from pokemon games) or not have such a dramatic effect on the overall power scaling of your game. -The side stories feel like surface-level millennial writing at its most cumbersome. Cult bad, corporatized land ownership bad being two of the more egregious examples. There is tact that can be brought to stories involving these things, especially if you want players to make connections and think about similar real-world issues, but by reducing them in such a way without even having an iota of WHY those things exist, or how those that detest them might also have skewed perception is quite frankly silly. -The attempt at making modular difficulty was something I found incomplete. It wouldn't have been that much harder to separate level scaling upwards and downwards, challenge scaling, fusion scaling, ai intelligence for both enemies and allies, to make it be better catered to those that don't like grinding as much, or want each battle to feel personally tuned in difficulty. While I wouldn't say I dislike this game, its one I couldn't bring myself to complete, and as such feel I would have been better off spending my time elsewhere.

Way more fun and engaging than I imagined. can't wait to beat it again and again and so on. In also looking forwarded to more from the creators!

very good game with excellent music, but was a bit shorter than i was expecting. still, it'd be awesome if a sequel was made :D ps. loved all the references to british culture like the dustbin daleks and arkidd (ey up, are kid)

I've only had Pondwalker for a day and a half but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself Walking fish aside this might be my new favorite "creature catcher" game over Monster Hunter Stories and Pokemon.

If you are having an urge to play Pokemon like I was but you also realized all of the newer games look like garbage. I have great news for you friend. This game blows Pokemon out of the water and then some. Fun combat, decent music, interesting characters and story. I’ll be playing this one for a while and really look forward to a sequel

you wash up on monster TF island where pokemon is real, yet the entire plot hinges on the idea that you want to leave. my suspension of disbelief can only go so far

Very very nice! Can be slow of fast-paced, you do as you wish. Relaxing and fun. And cute!

A fun creature collector with a couple caveats: -Unlike shinies in Pokemon, there are a number of achievements tied to catching bootlegged creatures (one for each type), so I feel that the bootlegging rate should really be higher. There are methods for increasing the rate postgame that I haven't unlocked, so this might be fine later? -Some of the platforming segments can be pretty jank; jumping on boxes to jump to a higher ledge often caused the box under your feet to spaz out instead. It was really only noticeable during the one [spoiler]Alice in Wonderland[/spoiler] segment though. +Gotta mention how convenient changing skills is. You can "peel" off skills from any creature and place it on any other 'compatible' creature. Very worth playing.

- Gameplay good - The platforming suck - Barkley best bud

Booted it up to play with my girlfriend and immediately got hit in the face with pronoun rot. I'm so fucking sick of this shit infecting every facet of my hobbies. Keep your degenerate social views to yourself tbh. I don't care about people being themselves, but I'm sick of it being shoved down my throat at all turns. I want my escapism to be escapism, not to be hit with the implied dilemma of supporting the philosophy by participating. I'm held captive by this shit in too many other areas of my life, it will *not* be in my private free time too, thanks.

A pretty good Pokemon-like game. Definitely give it a try at least.

Very good collector game. amazing soundtrack

Cassette beasts brought me one of the most joyful and hopeful gaming experiences that I've had in years. I grew up playing pokemon, and it's still really important to me. This game took me through an experience that was everything I always wished pokemon games could do for me. The gameplay is not only incredible turn based combat, but so novel and innovative with how core status effects are interwoven, making every battle feel unique which kept me mentally engaged in the combat so much more than other turnbased & jrpgs games ive played. It's abundantly clear that the creators of this game love this genre and set out to create an authentic incredible love letter to all of the games they loved growing up, but it is so much more than just a great homage. It is a titan all in its own right. Modern classic no doubt. Thank you to the entire team for building this beautiful experience that I was lucky enough to go through <3

Really, really cool aesthetic and a solid riff on 'mon-like combat.

So much content, and friendly to people who want to goof off, and its still difficult thanks to level scaling, and I just love the look of the whole game.

Creature collectors always will be compared to pokemon. Some embrace that and try to emulate that same feeling, but cassette beasts takes the more interesting approach to actually differentiate itself from the norm. The way that type advantages work in this game is really fun and just such a breath of fresh air. Exploring the open world, bit by bit gaining more overworld abilities is also rewarding. Cassette Beasts does its own thing and it works!