From indie team Bytten Studio in Brighton (of England) here we have… Cassette Beasts! Ready your inner ’80s and ’90s, for this has many cassettes in a playful take on the RPG genre.

This one has a clever play on its obvious Pokémon inspirations, involving more complexity and other interesting gameplay mechanics.

Cassette Beasts and the Pursuit of Cassette Player Glory

Okay, so RPGs like this are heavily 1990s entrenched. How it works is you get a big open-world map to explore, interspersed with battles with enemies.

For Cassette Beasts it’s all turn-based. Exactly in the style of Pokémon, except there’s a bit more complexity to proceedings going on.

The official genre is monster-taming, with action taking place from a third-person overhead perspective. You’re on the island of New Wirral and must collect monster forms. Once you do, you can combine monster forms and do battle with increasing levels of awesome.

That’s all to the tune of RPG exploration. Adventuring, battling, transformations, resting up by campfires to rejuvenate.

The battle system is good fun as well, with the tongue-in-cheek concept making for entertaining battle sequences.

Along with The Big Con (2021), it’s another indie game taking its 1990s very seriously. Another loving homage here. VHS tapes, cassette tapes…

This is a big game. There’s about 18 hours worth of gameplay here to run through the whole story, although a big shorter if you don’t want total exploration of everything.

Cassette Beasts is also a fantastic game.

Full marks to Bytten Studio here, as it took the genre and really shook it up a notch. The Pokémon series is closely associated with Nintendo, but the Japanese gaming giant rarely makes the games.

The duty goes to Game Freak and ILCA, with Nintendo publishing the titles. That’s often forgotten by gamers.

But here Bytten Studio has really done wonders and created a game we’d argue matches many recent Pokémon titles. For a small indie game studio, that’s very impressive indeed.

If this genre is your type of thing, this is all recommended big time. Cassette Beasts is available on Xbox, Switch, and Steam.

Cassette Beasts’ Super Soundtrack

The soundtrack to Cassette Beasts is provided by composer and musical artist Joel Baylis. He’s from England and did a great job on this game.

He recorded 65 pieces altogether, with some of them leaning more towards the pop rush style of songs anime shows often have.

Yet there are also plenty of compositions, ranging from contemplative to upbeat numbers as the Jaunty Merchant track below.

We do think the music is at its best when it veers towards more melancholic numbers, which complement the voxel graphics style very well.

Playing RPGs is often an introspective experience where long hours of gameplay lead you to familiarise yourself with, and love, the world you’re engaged in.

And the music only ever adds to the personal enjoyment of what’s quite an insular experience.

Fantabulous stuff and congratulations to Mr.Baylis on his efforts here.