Cassette Beasts

Lore & Background

Cassette Beasts is inspired by the Pokémon video game series and follows a player character who wakes up on the beach of New Wirral, an island to which they were transported from Earth. Using a cassette player, the player and a companion can transform into monsters to battle other monsters. The game eschews random encounters; all monsters are visible in the overworld. Battles are turn-based, with attacks assigned via stickers that can be transferred between monsters. The player character has their own health bar, and experience points are awarded to the player rather than the monsters, allowing flexible setup changes. New monsters are gained by 'recording' enemy monsters during battle. Elemental interactions have varied consequences, such as creating healing steam mists or coating metal monsters with poison. Any monster can be temporarily fused during combat into another monster, yielding over 14,000 possible fusions from the 120 base monsters. The overworld of New Wirral is an open world, and recording certain monsters grants the player additional movement abilities for exploration. The game includes a permadeath mode and a map randomizer.

Reader's Guide

Cassette Beasts was developed by UK-based Bytten Studio, a two-person team of Jay Baylis and Tom Coxon, both of whom had previous experience at Chucklefish working on Wargroove and Starbound. The game was designed for adults who grew up with Pokémon and sought deeper story and more complex mechanics. The 14,000 fusions were achieved by making monsters modular, allowing parts to combine automatically. Combat was inspired by Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, particularly the use of status effects to halt momentum. The plot takes inspiration from isekai, twisting the genre by having all characters transported similarly, focusing on the people present. The game was developed using the Godot engine, chosen for workflow efficiency, and ported to consoles with help from Pineapple Works. A free 1.2 update named Catacombs added moves, monsters, and a location. A paid DLC, Pier of the Unknown, released on October 4, 2023. A multiplayer update adding cross-platform play was released on May 20 for PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. In June 2026, a sequel, Cassette Beasts 2002, was announced for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and PC.

Did You Know?

• The game was released simultaneously on Xbox Game Pass on its PC release date.
• The game's free 1.2 update was named Catacombs.
• A paid DLC, Pier of the Unknown, was released on October 4, 2023.
• A sequel, Cassette Beasts 2002, was announced in June 2026.