Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, in a year where Pokémon has let her down, another monster-catching game was there for Alana. Beware of story spoilers if you haven't played the game yet...
Cassette Beasts feels like a video game that was tailor-made for me. Bytten Studio’s debut monster-catching RPG is a game that loves Pokémon. It embraces ‘80s and ‘90s culture, from fashion to music. It celebrates literature, from Shakespeare to Alice in Wonderland and even Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Plus, it’s unmistakably British – there are underground stations across the world, various UK accents from many of the characters, and its concerns with the working class feel like something ripped out of an independent British film – sans swearing, of course.
I want to start by saying that yes, I still like Pokémon, but I’m feeling more and more distant from it as the years go by. Whether it’s stagnant gameplay, disappointing story beats, or just abysmal technical issues, I no longer have the desire to pour hundreds of hours into a Pokémon game. Which is sad because this is a series I’ve grown up with and alongside.
This is perhaps why Cassette Beasts hit me so hard. This is, for lack of a better phrase, a 'grown-up' monster-catching game. And not only does it tick all of the boxes I’ve mentioned above, but it also understands the pain and struggles of change and growing up, and how this affects our mental health. It looks at how we deal with alienation, and how we handle feeling disillusioned and disappointed, but it also examines the good parts – coming out the other side a better person.
Everything Cassette Beasts conveys and does in-game is done through music. Growing up, I was surrounded by music: my dad could play a plethora of instruments, from the drums, bass, and the guitar, and he adored playing and listening. Car journeys would vary from Madonna to Radiohead, Florence & the Machine to Pink Floyd. If Dad liked it, we’d listen to it. But unlike my brother, who is also a pretty brilliant musician, I am utterly useless on anything and everything. Instead, what I love about music is the lyrics – the messages, the meanings, and how it ties together with the sounds and instruments.
Cassette Beasts understands that. Music is such an integral part of the game; just look at the title! Cassettes, at least in our world, are a thing of the past – vintage items that represent times gone by. I remember going through my dad’s and my brother’s cassettes and putting them in the car, and nowadays, I have a lot of nostalgia for them.
At the beginning of the game, you create your character who is then unceremoniously washed up on the beach of New Wirral. Soon after, you’re attacked by a Traffikrab, but a woman – Kayleigh – gives you a cassette player, and asks you “What’s your… aesthetic?”. Your answer determines your 'starter', and you can now transform into creatures using your musical device. With this device in hand, you find out where you are, and that you’re stuck here – this is an 'in-between' world, and there’s no way back home. Lots of other people have also ended up here for no rhyme or reason. But that doesn’t stop you from pushing forward, determined to go home and get away from this unusual world.
Cassette Beasts really throws you into the deep end. This isn’t some comfy Pokémon adventure where you pick your starter or understand what you’re doing. You have no idea where you are or what you’re doing, and you can suddenly transform into monsters using a cassette player. It’s all pretty weird and unsettling. Luckily, you have Kayleigh with you – and later on, you make a whole bunch of friends who can accompany you and who have their own Cassette Beasts that they can turn into.
Those cassette players are also used to record (essentially 'catch') monsters, meaning you can expand your pool of monsters that you can turn into. It’s a cool gameplay twist on the Pokémon formula, strengthened by the fact that you and your companion can later 'fuse' into a more powerful beast, combining types, attacks, and a health pool. You’re only able to fuse after particular events in the story, which hit the emotional core of the game that makes it that deeply relatable adventure for an anxious adult, and disillusioned Pokémon fan, like me.
In an attempt to get home, you have to fight Archangels, unusual creepypasta-style monsters that are inspired by different works of real-life art and literature. Their designs are miles away from GBA-style pixel art – Poppetox is a black and white claymation skeleton, while Mammon is a collage, a cubist blend of pictures, colours, visual styles, and so on. But they’re also representations of the things we may fear growing up such as death, deception, and consumerism.
Meredith’s quest is one of the ones that hit me the hardest. She’s a Londoner from a different time, and world, than your character, and she loves tinkering with machines, action movies, and “bands with tragic backstories”. She wants to find a particular vinyl at the mall from a band that she loves. The mall, at the northern end of New Wirral, is abandoned – full of faucet-like creatures and ripped teddy bears. You eventually find a vinyl, but not the vinyl; instead, it's similar, but from an alternate world, and Meredith starts to berate herself for thinking she could ever find what she wanted – the thing that made her happy.
The story exposes the attachment we put onto physical objects or how we attach meaning to songs or media, but it’s only exposed when Meredith and you crash through the floor and are attacked by Nowhere Monarch, the 'king' of this mall, who tells the pair, “Your kind could live such rich lives. But instead, you trade it for hollow symbols and artifice.” Nowhere Monarch declares himself king of this “nothing” palace – a mall full of “artifice”. And you have to fight it.
It’s during the fight that, after attacking the Archangel once, Meredith and you begin to flicker, and Meredith declares that she doesn’t want to let herself down anymore. You and Meredith fuse, and the music changes from a rocking instrumental track to a defiant, self-assured song. And, as vocalist Shelby Harvey sings, “Oh no, you won't dare stop and stare again,” I’m pumped.
These lyrical shifts in the music are amazing. They hammer home the game’s narrative themes perfectly and define the attitude of the cast as they each develop and progress emotionally. Even you, the player character, who is lost and far away from home, determined to do the impossible, have a voice in the lyrics. And yes, even the enemies. 'Like Chimeras' sounds like a pull-and-push between the player’s party and the Rogue Fusions hidden across New Wirral, while Shot in the Dark represents the daring of you, the player, and your other human opponent as you take each other on.
For Meredith in particular, overcoming the Archangel battle is only the beginning of her deepening relationship with you. The vinyl you found is now magically the one she was after, but by this point, Meredith recognises that the journey might have got them killed, and was trivial. But when she takes the vinyl back to the Gramophone Café and puts it on the record player, she opens up to you, and shares how music helped her.
After all, don’t we all attach meaning to objects, items, media, and songs? I certainly do – I can’t divorce Pink Floyd or Joy Division from my dad, two bands we loved to listen to together. Those moody days where I just don’t feel like doing anything but reflecting, I’ll pop on Transmission or some Lou Reed or anything and just listen and relate.
Other characters have similar attachments to music and creation, too. Kayleigh admits she wants to learn to play guitar, and as you get closer, she starts practising again, after years of abandoning it. Felix, an artist, and his quest revolves around him growing as an artist, accepting his older artworks, and not being embarrassed of them. And every time you fuse with one of these characters and hear those lyrics, they take on a different meaning, but it's always one of progression.
I think of the way I’ve attached meaning to Pokémon over the years. Yellow reminds me of huddling over a tiny screen with my brother, and the innocence of youth, and I can’t detach Ruby & Sapphire from the time I sat at the top of the stairs, hands clutching my GBA, as I listen to my parents fighting. The last time I really connected to a Pokémon game was Black & White – I was 17 years old then, and I’m 30 now. (Help.) And though there have been flashes of greatness in newer games, I haven’t even truly loved a mainline Pokémon game since 2011, besides Legends: Arceus.
Cassette Beasts’ understanding of change, growing up, and coming to terms with things – coupled with how it embraces RPG mechanics much more than Pokémon has done over the years, and how it reinvents the monster-catching wheel – made it stick out to me this year. It does sting a little bit, because Scarlet & Violet, despite enjoying them initially, have really slipped away from me with the DLC. But perhaps the realisation that I don't need Pokémon anymore was the growing pain I needed to experience.
Cassette Beasts doesn’t quite make my top five because, ironically, it’s got some pretty big technical problems on Switch, but I wanted to shout about how good it feels to play a monster-catching game that feels like it’s grown up with me. My trip to New Wirral proved to be a learning experience that I’ll never forget.