Here are the full patch notes for Cassette Beasts version 1.7. Spoilers ahead!
New Additions
- Magikrabs Gauntlet has been added. This is a new gameplay system that is available in Nights Bridge Station after completing the Land of Confusion and Take Me On quests. - In the gauntlet you face an endless series of randomised and increasingly difficult battles against friends and foes old and new. - You can take on the gauntlet on your own, or invite a friend through online multiplayer to take on the challenges together.
- Ranger Wilma now provides a Sticker Fusion service after youve completed Land of Confusion and Take Me On. Sticker Fusion allows you to move rare and uncommon attributes you like from one sticker to another.
- After Frankie has completed her training, you can speak to her in the Town Hall to clear the ranger noticeboard of quests you dont want. This costs a certain amount of Fused Material, and you get no quest rewards.
- During multiplayer raids and gauntlet battles you can now: - Use items - Fuse with your partner NPC - Switch to your partner NPCs tape
- Steam Workshop support has been added.
Fixes
- Spitzfyres stats have been increased to be in line with normal values for a final stage remaster.
- Berserk no longer affects passive moves.
- Scripted battles RNG is re-seeded when you re-attempt them after fleeing or defeat. This wont affect the majority of players, but is noted here for the speedrunning community.
- Fixed the game using an unusually large amount of memory if you cross the overworld loading boundary and camp in Lakeside.
- Fixed common Peekaboo stickers sometimes not stacking.
- Fixed Copy That copying the wrong opponent if the intended target is a fusion. (Note: it copies only one member of the fusion.)
- Custom/Random Starter into Machine Cursed Change the Record no longer triggers automatic passives like Custom Starter on the tape you switch to.
- Fixed Clobbers AP cost being too high for it to be useful.
- Fixed avatars of other players during online multiplayer sometimes warping into scenes at the wrong position.
- Randomness is now used as a speed tie break during PvP battles, instead of the host player taking priority.
- Fixed Fission Power not respecting the temporarily-imposed level limits during raid battles.
- Fixed a bug that allowed already-hacked fusion raids to be hacked again.
- Fixed stickers with the compatible with any tape attribute being allowed in no-attribute PvP battles when not compatible without the attribute.
- Fixed an overflow bug that could occur if you stack many many stat-boosting effects and passives.
- Fixed a typo in the Harbourtown Heritage Centre.
- Dual Wield can no longer be used to smuggle damaging/debuffing moves past Machine Curse.
Buckle up for the ride - Cassette Beasts Version 1.7 is now live and available for all current platforms! This "Gauntlet Update" adds several new features to the game - read on to learn what's new!
Magikrab's Gauntlet
For players who have finished the main story of Cassette Beasts, Magikrab's Gauntlet will now be available! This is a series of randomised combat encounters aboard one of the Mer-line's interdimensional trains and sees you facing off against strange mirages of old faces - friends and foe alike!
As you progress, you will build up winnings in the form of Fused Material that you can keep if you cash out. However, defeat means you lose everything! Your progress will be saved every 5 carriages, so you won't have to start from the beginning each time. You will also come across caf carriages where you can trade some of your winnings for recovery items - not to mention that other treasures can be found on board the train, too!
Oh, and of course - Magikrab's Gauntlet is entirely playable in Online Multiplayer! Team up with a friend as you face against impossible odds, together! To aid in your battles, the ability to fuse with your companion character whilst in co-op online battles has also been added in Version 1.7. This applies to Rogue Fusion encounters, too! You can find Magikrab's Gauntlet in the final story area of the game. You're in for a bumpy ride!
Sticker Fusion
A new service is now available at Harbourtown Town Hall - Sticker fusion!
In exchange for Fused Materials, Wilma will transfer applicable bonus attributes from one sticker to another. Have you come across the perfect move for your beast but wished it had a rare attribute to make it even stronger? This is perfect for you! After all, with that new gauntlet, you're going to need all the help you can get! Sticker fusion is available to players once they have completed the main story and the Ranger Captain questline.
Premium DLC: Fashion Pack
Alongside all the brand new free features for the game, we've also added a new cosmetic DLC. The Fashion Pack is priced at 3.99 USD/3.99 EU/3.29 and comes with a ton of new looks for your character as they travel through New Wirral!
The Fashion Pack adds the following cosmetic items to the players wardrobe: Baseball Cap Flat Cap Twin Tails Bow & Bangs Foxy Cut Windswept Spikes & Goggles Swept Mohawk Flower & Fringe Beret Round Specs Trenchcoat Crop Top Tall Boots
Steam Workshop
Steam Workshop is being added for 1.7! Whilst Cassette Beasts already has a thriving mod community, this update allows mod creators to upload mods directly to the Steam client for ease of installation for Steam players. Click here for the Workshop page!
Existing DLC Updates
We're also updating the Steam version of the soundtrack to include all the tracks that we've added since launch (including 3 new tracks from Version 1.7 and all the tracks from the Pier of the Unknown expansion) and updating the digital artbook to include monsters added since Cassette Beasts first launched.
Once again, we wouldn't be able to keep supporting Cassette Beasts with new content without the positive community who keep us going. Thanks so much for all the support - we hope you enjoy once again exploring the world of New Wirral! Until next time! - Bytten Studio
Grab Cassette Beasts and DLC at huge discounts during the Turn-based Carnival until November 20!
Cassette Beasts: 50% Off
Cosplay Pack: 25% Off
Soundtrack: 50% Off
Artbook: 30% Off
All aboard! Cassette Beasts is getting a new, free content update on November 20th that introduces a brand new game mode! The 1.7 Gauntlet Update will see players taking on previous bosses and rivals in a knuckle-biting fight for fusion material and bragging rights! Check out the brand new trailer below: [previewyoutube=Vpi3nfVnMVo;full][/previewyoutube]
Cassette Beasts 1.7 "Gauntlet Update"
Get ready - buckle up for the ride! Magikrab needs your help and will pay you handsomely in return! Magikrabs Gauntlet sees you hopping on one of the Mer-line's interdimensional trains and battling allies, enemies and bosses from your past. Available after the main story, this is the ultimate challenge for those players who think theyve mastered their monster forms! Whats more, this gauntlet is entirely playable with a friend in online co-op better buddy up, because this ride is about to get rough! The new Sticker fusion feature gives you a whole new way to customize your move stickers better save up those Fused Materials!
New Cosmetic DLC: Fashion Pack
We also have a new cosmetic DLC coming along with the Gauntlet Update! The Fashion Pack is priced at 3.99 USD/3.99 EU/3.29 and will come with a ton of new looks for your character as they travel through New Wirral!
The Fashion Pack adds the following cosmetic items to the players wardrobe: Baseball Cap Flat Cap Twin Tails Bow & Bangs Foxy Cut Windswept Spikes & Goggles Swept Mohawk Flower & Fringe Beret Round Specs Trenchcoat Crop Top Tall Boots
Steam Workshop
Whilst the PC version of Cassette Beasts already has a robust modding community, the 1.7 update will bring Steam Workshop support to the game - letting mod creators share their creations directly via the Steam platform!
Finally, in case you missed our Halloween celebration, the mailbox code SPOOKY24 is still active! Enter it at the mailbox for a spooky treat!
We can't wait for you all to check out the game's new update - see you all on November 20th!
Hello Residents of New Wirral and beyond!
We're excited to release a new musical performance for Cassette Beasts, including something new you've never heard! The performance goes live on YouTube at 9:00 AM PT/12:00 PM ET/18:00 CEST. Visit the link below to catch our players perform, including Shelby Harvey and Joel Baylis!
[previewyoutube=IOseYDF9J3g;full][/previewyoutube]
Be sure to stay until the end for a little surprise we've got cooking...
Until next time!
Greetings Beasts' collectors!
For your reading pleasure, here are today's Updates, Quality of Life, and Bug fixes to make your experience in Cassette Beasts even better, mostly focusing on Multiplayer! Scroll down to the bottom for the notes from 1.6.0 which are pretty juicy but older now.
Fixed in 1.6.2
- Fixed desync errors in PvP battles where one or more players are using the randomiser.
- Fixed desync errors in PvP battles where multiple player characters tapes break on the same turn.
- Fixed desync errors in multiplayer activities with Nintendo Switch players related to Magikrab.
New Additions
- Connect with up to 7 other players (for a total of 8 players) using invite codes, platform invitations, and a more passive Play with Friends mode.
- On PC, as an alternative to using invitations, you can connect directly to other players over a LAN.
- When using Play with Friends, the game will attempt to match you with other active players who are on your platform friends list automatically.
- Cross-play between Steam, Xbox and Nintendo Switch is possible using temporary invite codes.
- If youre on PC, you can play online using mods provided that the other players in your lobby have a compatible set of mods. Cross-play with other platforms is disabled while mods are active.
- See the other players in your lobby explore the world of New Wirral, and get updates on what theyre doing.
- Trade tapes with other players in your lobby. If either of you are using the built-in randomisation modes, you must both be using the same seed.
- Challenge other players in your lobby to PvP battles, with optional rules governing levels, fusion, sticker attributes, and whether duplicate stickers are allowed. You dont have to be playing the same randomisation seed for this.
- When you encounter a Rogue Fusion in the world, invite a friend to join you in a raid! You wont get any Fused Material, but there may be something else you both find useful Any tapes you record will be received by both players. If either of you are using the built-in randomisation modes, you must both be using the same seed.
- Note that there will be a process of ironing out issues for a while after release. From time to time we may temporarily degrade server performance, or reduce update rates and the number of players per lobby, until issues are fixed.
- Added Moonstone Island outfit set to the character creator.
Fixed
- Fixed tapes exp requirements to upgrade continuing to increase after 5 stars.
- Fixed Custom/Random Starter moves taking effect after the user is defeated.
- Fixed multi-hit moves never hitting for the maximum number of hits.
- Fixed Throw inflicting damage of the wrong type.
- Fixed Bad Forecast stickers never spawning with attributes.
- Fixed Booby Traps animation sometimes facing the wrong way.
- Prevented Booby Trap from being Booby Trapped.
- Fixed Scubalrus having only 6 sticker slots.
- Fixed Fragliacci and Rosehood (from the Pier of the Unknown DLC) missing their battle cries.
- Fixed Pier of the Unknown DLC monster Umbrahella sometimes showing up in flood events. (This only ever happened if you had the DLC installed, but weve fixed it since it could unexpectedly spoil the DLC content.)
- Fixed move and status animations not always lining up correctly with Adeptile, Blunderbusk, Fragliacci, Rosehood, and Scarleteeth.
- Fixed a few typos.
Raw Fury's Publisher Sale has now begun, and we're a part of it! Check out the very nice discounts you can get on our whole catalog of Cassette Beasts, extras, and DLC!
Cassette Beasts: 30% Off
Soundtrack: 30% Off
Artbook: 30% Off
Pier of the Unknown DLC: 25% Off
Cosplay Pack: 20% Off
We hope you're enjoying the Multiplayer Update! Remember to share your squad moments with us on socials and Discord: https://twitter.com/ByttenStudio, https://discord.gg/byttenstudio.
~ Bytten Studio
Citizens of New Wirral! Today is the day for the launch of the FREE Multiplayer Update!
As a reminder, here is what you can expect from todays exciting launch:
- Party-up with up to 8 players, all visible in your world as you travel!
- Battle your friends in 1v1, and even assign custom rules to your battle such as enabling/disabling sticker attributes!
- Trade tapes with each other, including any stickers youve applied!
- Team up for raid battles against Rogue Fusions to receive Cyber Material to help you obtain Bootlegs faster!
Hey y'all!
Today is the 1st anniversary of the release of our game Cassette Beasts! We can't overstate how much your support and enthusiasm has changed our lives, and we're so grateful to all of you. Thanks for joining us on our Cassette Beasts journey so far!
As a celebration, we put together a musical performance of Face Down from the game's soundtrack which you can watch here:
[previewyoutube=zmzYVkEKf7U;full][/previewyoutube]
There's more to look forward to in the coming year, including the upcoming Multiplayer Update, but for now we'll wrap up with this message from us here at Bytten Studio.
If you have any particular memories of Cassette Beasts from the past year, feel free to share them with us in the comments below! You can also join the community at the official Discord too!
Until next time!
Surprise Sale! We've got a flash sale on our game and DLCs - check out these sweet deals that will last until 17:00 GMT on March 28th! Cassette Beasts - 30% off Art Book - 30% off Soundtrack - 30% off Pier of the Unknown DLC - 25% off Cosplay Pack - 20% off If you've not heard, we also dropped some HUGE news during the Cassette Beasts 2024 Showcase today - you can check out all the excitement HERE! Until Next Time! ~ Bytten Studio
Hello, Residents of New Wirral! Were so excited to be able to announce a launch day for the upcoming Multiplayer Update to Cassette Beasts - May 20th! This new update brings some cool new ways to play together with friends:
- Party-up with up to 8 players, all visible in your world as you travel!
- Battle your friends in 1v1, and even assign custom rules to your battle such as enabling/disabling sticker attributes!
- Trade tapes with each other, including any stickers youve applied!
- Team up for raid battles against Rogue Fusions to receive Cyber Material to help you obtain Bootlegs faster!
To purchase merchandise mentioned in the showcase, head to Symbiote Studios for plushies or Black Screen Records for the vinyl re-press, t-shirt, and tote bag! We'll be hosting an AMA on Reddit on /r/JRPG at 17:00 UTC! - come on over and learn more or ask your own questions! Be sure to tell your friends to get ready to play together on May 20th when we launch with cross-play on all available platforms! See you in New Wirral! - Bytten Studio & Raw Fury
We're happy to announce the CASSETTE BEASTS SHOWCASE 2024!
News on the upcoming Multiplayer Update!
Brand new announcements!
An exclusive musical performance!
Premiering on Youtube on March 25th @
7AM PT/10 AM ET/14:00 GMT/15:00 CEST
You can view the video event below, and even have it notify you when it goes live:
[previewyoutube=jN_IYdwoL_A;full][/previewyoutube]
We can't wait to show you what we've been up to!
~ Bytten Studio
Happy Spring! We're finally moving into nicer weather and that means it's that time of year again - the Steam Spring Sale! Here are the discounts you can get starting... now! Cassette Beasts - 30% off Art Book - 30% off Soundtrack - 30% off Pier of the Unknown DLC - 25% off Cosplay Pack - 20% off You've got until March 21st to grab the above on great discounts! We've got some exciting news dropping on March 25th that you won't want to miss - keep your eyes here on Steam for our announcement! See you then!
Hey everyone! We thought we'd do a news roundup to cover announcements and information that you might have missed from the past month!
Happy Valentine's Day!
If you're a member of the official Discord or follow us on Twitter, you'll have seen that we sent our lovely fans a Valentine's Day card!
The mailbox code UNDYINLOVE is still active, so feel free to redeem it in your copy of Cassette Beasts for a present!
Music, Merch & More!
We recently announced that we've collaborated with our friends over at Black Screen Records to release a whole host of new Cassette Beasts related goodies, including:
- A new release of the Vinyl and cassette tape soundtrack physical editions!
- T-Shirts!
- A tote bag!!
What's more, we've released the entire soundtrack on streaming platforms including Spotify! We hope this gives you more opportunities to listen to the music of Cassette Beasts, wherever you are.
Multiplayer Update News
We were hoping to have some news regarding the Multiplayer Update for the community this month, but we've not been able to announce it just yet. We're sorry for the wait! We're feeling confident that we'll have news for you all in March, so stay tuned!
That's all for now! As always, if you want to chat to the community or us devs, come by our official Discord! Until next time!
Looking for a great game to play with the folks you love the most? Cassette Beasts is the perfect fit for Valentine's Day (and beyond), and now we're featured in Steam's Remote Together Fest starting NOW!
Speaking of playing together, we have some really exciting news coming to you at the end of the month! That's all we'll say about it right now, but keep your eyes and ears open
Until then!
We'll be featured during the Games in Sweden Steam Event! That means you can get some excellent deals on Cassette Beasts and DLC until February 5th!
Cassette Beasts: 25% off
Pier of the Unknown DLC: 20% off
Cosplay Pack: 20% off
Artbook: 25% off
Soundtrack: 25% off
Stay tuned in the next few weeks when we have some VERY exciting news to announce!
Until next Time!
One last surprise for 2023 - we're participating in Steam's Winter Sale... starting now!
- Cassette Beasts - 25% Off
- Pier of the Unknown DLC - 20% Off
- Cassette Beasts Deluxe Edition - 20% Off
- Cosplay Pack - 10% Off
- Soundtrack - 25% Off
- Artbook - 25% Off
Thanks to artist Grayson Evans for the adorable Kayleigh artwork!
Hi y'all!
We just wanted to wish the community well as we wrap up here for the end of 2023 and head on into 2024! You have all have helped make Cassette Beasts what it is this year - your love, enthusiasm and support has really been greater than we could have imagined! There's still more cool stuff to come for Cassette Beasts in the new year - we hope you're all excited to be along for the ride! As featured in the above image, you can redeem the code HOLIDAYS at the mailbox in-game to recieve a festive treat from us!
That's all from us! If you want to keep up to date with Cassette Beasts, you can follow us on Twitter, check out our subreddit or even join the official Discord to hang out with us devs and the community! See you in 2024! ~Bytten Studio
Season's Greetings, Residents of New Wirral and those joining us soon!
Just a little announcement today: our publisher Raw Fury are holding their annual "Rawcember" holiday event, and we've decided to join in by making our demo available once again! You and your friends can grab the free demo between December 14th-18th - check it out below!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1846560
This is a perfect opportunity to check out Cassette Beasts for the first time for those who haven't yet played!
That's all for today! If you want to keep up to date with Cassette Beasts, you can follow us on Twitter, check out our subreddit or even join the official Discord to hang out with us devs and the community!
Until next time!
Hey Folks! As we head towards the end of the year, we wanted to give the community an update on how things are coming along with the upcoming Multiplayer Update. We've also had some questions about what exact features are going to be included, so we've put together a new video that shows them off - check it out! [previewyoutube=5Fw7ElAoyhM;full][/previewyoutube] When playing online, you'll be able to:
- Party up with up to 8 friends, all visible in your world!
- Battle your friends, and even assign custom rules to your battle such as enabling/disabling sticker attributes!
- Trade tapes with each other!
- Team up for raid battles against Rogue Fusions!
As we wrap up for the year, we have a couple more surprises to come - so watch this space! If you want to keep up to date with Cassette Beasts, you can follow us on Twitter, check out our subreddit or even join the official Discord to hang out with us devs and the community! Until next time!
Greetings, Residents of New Wirral and soon-to-be tourists!
First things first: the Steam Awards are coming up and we're hoping to be nominated for a really cool category! If you enjoyed Cassette Beasts, it would be ever so kind of you to vote for us in the Best Game on Steam Deck Award right now using the widget above!
We're super excited to have this opportunity for our community to let us know how much they like our game - thanks for the support, everyone!
The second order of business is that the Steam Autumn Sale starts today at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 ET/18:00 BST/19:00 CST and weve got some pretty neat discounts coming your way to join (or re-join) the fusion frenzy in Cassette Beasts!
Cassette Beasts: 25% Off
Pier of the Unknown DLC: 10% Off
Cassette Beasts Soundtrack: 25% Off
Cassette Beasts Artbook: 25% Off
This sale runs until November 28th, so be sure to make use of the discount before it ends!
We know that many of you are eager for news on the Multiplayer update - were hoping to have an update on this sooner rather than later, so watch this space! Thanks for your patience as always!
If you want to chat to the community and dev team, why not join the official Discord?
Catch you next time!
Greetings New Wirral residents! It seems Pombomb has brought us a letter...? What is it, boy?!
We are happy to announce Cassette Beasts is part of the Cozy Quest festival, starting today!
This event is run by Secret Mode and includes a curated selection of the most cozy games on Steam, so we are honored to be part of it! After all, what's comfier than hanging out with your friends at the Gramophone Caf in Harbourtown?
To join in the fun, here are some pretty cozy discounts for you!
Cassette Beasts - 25% off
Pier of the Unknown DLC - 10% off
Game Soundtrack - 25% off
Artbook - 25% off
What a great excuse to come and hang out on New Wirral! We'll be waiting for you at the Cozy Quest festival from today until November 20th
See you soon!
Hey folks!
Its traditional among indies to do a postmortem once a game is out, where devs talk about what went well and what didnt. This is not one of those. A postmortem is only performed when the patient is dead, and Cassette Beasts is still kicking! After all, multiplayer is still on the way! No, this post is more like a biopsy?
Before we get into it, I will just quickly say that although we can't share precise stats, approximately 350,000+ people have played Cassette Beasts. Many of those are on Game Pass of course, but the game has also sold very well on Steam and on Nintendo Switch. Thats very good for an indie game! Review scores have shocked us as well. Before release we thought wed get a few 8/10s if we were lucky - we certainly didnt anticipate the 9s and even 10/10s!
The reception to Cassette Beasts has exceeded all our expectations--and youll soon see I have a lot to say about expectations!
My names Tom. At Bytten Studio I do the technical stuff, and take the lead on game design--with Jay filling in my many blind spots. Today I want to write a bit about Cassette Beasts design philosophy. This blog post will assume some familiarity with Cassette Beasts, and there are unmarked spoilers ahead as well, so go and finish the game first, and then come back for a peek behind the curtain!
Expectations
Jay has told me a few times that he feels like game design is almost like science--not because you can predict what will happen, but because the process of designing games is like the process of the scientific method. The designer has a hypothesis about what makes fun, they build an experiment (the game), run it to see the results (release it), then adjust their hypothesis, and build the next experiment. Every game has at least one hypothesis at its core, whether its actually written out, or just kinda felt out. Cassette Beasts has several, but what Im writing about here today is my hypothesis about the impact of the player's own expectations on their experience and their impressions of a game, and how developers can make use of that. While I think the truth of the hypothesis is evident in the shockingly positive response to Cassette Beasts, Im not formally trained in psychology (or game design, for that matter). And I havent treated this very scientifically, either. The following is just how I think about expectations in the context of game design and my rationalization for Cassette Beasts happy reception.
Setting Expectations
Theres a reason every Cassette Beasts trailer starts with a quick 5-second montage showing, specifically, exploration, battling, and then fusion. Its so that viewers know what to expect from the rest of the trailer. Its like a trailer for the trailer. Very few people will actually sit through and watch a 1-minute video for something they dont know theyre going to be interested in. And this isnt to be critical of those with a short attention span--we all have a limited amount of time and attention we can give to things each day. A lot of game trailers today open with animations, logos, and exposition, and immediately lose me before I even know what the game is. (Many thanks to Marcus Herbertsson for our fantastic trailers!) We brought this same philosophy to the demo. For those who didnt play the demo that was available on Steam, it consists of the opening of the game and continues until the moment after youve met Eugene and have received his quest. Many games fill the opening hours with dialogue and cutscenes, but if we had done this it would have set the wrong expectations for the rest of the game. Cassette Beasts is relatively light on dialogue and focuses more on gameplay. And so the demo drops you into your first battle within the first few seconds. Each of the games main systems are introduced before the demo ends. We even sneakily tease the next section of the game at the end of the demo in the form of a cliffhanger--another way to use expectations.
Exceeding Expectations
When players evaluate games its never against an objective scale. I believe that usually a game is compared against the imaginary ideal version of the game the player expected, based on first impressions. So to get very positive reviews, a game needs to surprise players with things they want but havent thought about. You could try to set low expectations and then exceed those, but thatll work against your marketing. And in any case, most of the expectations on your game wont be under your control, theyll be imposed on your game by patterns laid out in other games. Obviously, delivering something of a really high quality is one way to do this, but theres only so much you can do on an indie budget. The real trick is providing things that players didnt know they wanted. Heres an example. Many expectations on Cassette Beasts are determined by what Pokmon, as the dominant monster-collecting RPG, does. Pokmon is great, but it is weird that trying to capture a Pokmon lower level than your own is so irritating. If you estimate its bulkiness incorrectly, or you just dont equip any weaker moves (or False Swipe), or youre just very over-leveled, you can easily knock out something you wanted to capture. And if you dont weaken it, you waste more balls on it than you would on a higher level Pokmon. Nobody in the Pokmon community is really talking about this irritation, its just kind of unspoken. (Sidenote: Im certain that the designers at Game Freak have thought about this--I suspect its actually a major reason why you can throw balls outside of battle in recent games. However, even that solution comes with its own drawbacks IMO.) Cassette Beasts didnt need to have the same capture mechanic with the same issues. Because its always double battles in Cassette Beasts, and because you spend a whole round recording in Cassette Beasts, the game can simply keep your desired monster from dying when it knows you want to record it. You might be able to see now how bootlegs, stickers, character levels, and several other mechanics in Cassette Beasts were designed to address various other unspoken needs. Stickers, for example, let players quickly mess around with different party configurations and strategies. This can be fun in any RPG but usually, it involves an incredible grind each time, which, while fun for some, doesnt appeal to the same group of strategizing players. Indie games these days are expected to improve on formulas and mechanics from AA/AAA games. So if your game only addresses spoken, well-known needs, it can only ever meet expectations. The first-impression-based ideal version of the game that the game is compared against already does the known stuff perfectly! To exceed expectations, you have to surprise players by addressing the needs that they werent aware of. Theres no easy way to do this. You have to be deeply in tune with your demographic, notice when you feel friction in other games, and introspect to find the source of that friction.
Subverting Expectations
Subverting expectations is a bit easier to achieve without deep knowledge of the genre and demographic. An expectation is subverted when what a player thought was a rule actually wasnt. As players progress through a game, theyre unconsciously building up a model of the game in their heads (this is separate from the first impressions ideal version of the game). The model consists of rules about what can and cant happen in the game, and the player uses these rules to deduce what will happen next, creating new expectations. Once the player intuitively feels that their model is complete, they feel like they know what to expect in any scenario the game can throw at them in the future, and the game loses its mystery. This is usually the point when I drop a game, and Im sure Im not alone here! Ill use an example from Persona 5 here (spoiler warning). It took me 120 hours to finish Persona 5, and I loved it, but I understood the entire battle system within the first 20 hours. There was a high point about halfway in, where the boss fight in Futabas palace broke all the rules, but not much came after that--bosses just added more phases and more HP. The gameplay felt boring after Futabas palace because I already knew what to expect from the battle system for the rest of the game. I was just throwing hours into it to get to the next bit of story. There are two kinda interesting ways we tried to keep Cassette Beasts from losing its mystery.
Delaying Mastery
One way to keep the player from feeling like their mental model of the game is complete is by making it difficult to complete that mental model. The chemistry system in Cassette Beasts is one place we do this. Elemental type matchups in Cassette Beasts inflict status effects, instead of simply increasing or decreasing damage. Its intentionally difficult to memorize all the matchups and all the status effects on the chart. Youre not actually meant to! Even I havent. Once youve climbed the learning curve of the type system in Pokmon, or the affinities in Shin Megami Tensei, thats it, there are no other aspects of the type system to master. But in Cassette Beasts once youre up the initial incline onto the plateau of competence--and you know enough to know whats good against what--theres a whole second curve to master. Knowing what specific statuses each type matchup inflicts provides benefits in battle, but its not necessary. Players need to know enough about a games systems to play competently. But this isnt necessarily the same thing as knowing enough to play masterfully. Competence and mastery are two very different things. Games can be designed to make competence easy, and mastery very difficult. Doing this can help keep players from completing their mental models early on, knowing what to expect from that point onwards, and becoming bored. Rules arent necessarily about the games mechanics. They can encompass the games setting or story too: for example, the idea that monsters in Cassette Beasts are mindless beasts. Its never explicitly stated, and you never consciously think of it as a rule, but you do kinda just pick it up after the first few battles. None of the monsters try to talk to you, so probably none of them can right?
Surprises & Exceptions
If you know what rules players are picking up about your game, you can intentionally break them to upend the players model. We do this quite a lot in Cassette Beasts. Since Ive said game design is like science, Im required by law to include at least one equation: expectation + the unexpected = surprise Here's a simpler, albeit more specific, version of that equation: rule + exception = surprise What this means is, you can surprise players (and subvert their expectations) by creating exceptions to rules. You can even intentionally design rules into your game just so you can break them later on. This works as long rules are not explicit--Kayleigh telling the player during their first battle that monsters cant talk would instead be a Chekovs Gun-style bit of obvious foreshadowing. By drawing attention to the rule, it would foreshadow its own exception, and so the exception would no longer be surprising. Heres an example that worked well in Cassette Beasts: when you play through the opening of the game, you explore a bright and pleasant low-stakes pixel art world of monsters and humans. You could almost slap the wholesome label onto it! Then, just as you think youve figured the game out, youre thrust into a dark and creepy station, to face a level 100 3D model of an enemy that talks like a human and fights like a monster. After that, maybe you think the rule is that humans and archangels can talk, monsters cant. Well, not long after that you meet Magikrab and Kuneko, monsters who can talk. Later on, perhaps you unconsciously think the rule is that there are humans, archangels, and monsters, and everything in battle is one of those three Until you meet Barkley, a dog--not a monster dog, just an ordinary dog who happens to be able to transform like humans do. There are many exceptions to many rules all throughout the game, including multiple big ones in the final battle, and even a few long after the end of the game. Most players, for instance, dont realize that the location of Nights Bridge Station is randomized until they start a second playthrough or they start comparing notes with other players. Maybe you didnt even know that until you read it here!
Making a Rule of Exceptions
Early in the pandemic, I played my first Animal Crossing game. One of the things I admired about it was that new mechanics and activities were quite cleverly paced. Every time I thought I finally knew everything I would encounter in this game, it introduced something new, like an unconscious seagull on the beach, or a slingshot that lets you shoot down presents drifting on balloons, or holiday events. It got to the point where I caught myself thinking almost anything could happen on this island, and I think that is what drives people to continue playing Animal Crossing endlessly, even after the game has run out of surprises to give. Its the anticipation of being rewarded with a new surprise that drives people to keep going, not the surprises themselves. With Cassette Beasts we landed on a series of surprises that I think are also pretty well paced. Most of the surprises are not about anything particularly important. One of the examples Ive used--whether monsters can talk or not--is pretty inconsequential. But every time a rule is broken, it feels to the player like the space of possibilities is growing. After the rules have been shown to break a few times, that sense of ever-increasing possibilities is incorporated into the players mental model of the game as a rule of its own. Then, when players compare their increasing possibility space model against their first impressions ideal version of the game, the former feels a lot bigger, more nebulous, and more mysterious. I think this is one reason why weve ended up with so many comments praising Cassette Beasts for having tons of content, despite only being a 20-30 hours RPG made mostly by two guys! Its not the amount of content as much as the feeling that theres a lot of content.
Meeting Expectations
After exceeding and subverting players expectations, meeting them should be easy, right? Hahaha, nope! Normally, when people talk about expectations, they talk about high and low expectations, as if theyre on a linear scale. But theres also a breadth and depth to expectations that we dont normally think about. Every other day on Twitter, someone will ask us if Cassette Beasts has a Battle Tower, as if thats the only kind of post-game a monster-collecting game can have. Clearly, players can have specific expectations, not just high/low ones. As mentioned, a lot of expectations are out of our control, because theyre determined by what other games do. (To be clear, this isn't a criticism of the idea of having a feature like a Battle Tower--nor a statement that we will or won't add one in future. Im just pointing out that people are laser-focused on a very particular kind of post-game, when there are many other possibilities out there that could fit better.) As another example, some players have admitted disappointment that fusions in Cassette Beasts are temporary because they expected them to be permanent like in a particular fan game they played. We did try our best to set the correct expectations in our trailers and other materials, but someones always gonna be disappointed with whatever you do. Neither temporary nor permanent fusion is better than the other. What matters is which fits the game best. The main reason we have Ranger Captain battles in Cassette Beasts is that we needed a long-running major side-quest, and it fit the setting of the game. But there was another smaller reason at the back of my mind: the idea that someone would would react like no gym leaders, game sux . There was (and still is) a lot of pressure on us to do Pokmon things! At some point though, we have to draw the line and decide which expectations not to meet. Thered be no value in making Cassette Beasts be exactly like Pokmon. But its not all bad. Actually, Im pleased that players are happy with the fact that the game has only one town, despite expectations of multiple towns set by other RPGs. Having more towns would not have added anything worthwhile to the game!
Future Expectations
The problem with success is that people expect you to follow it up with an even bigger success! If we do another Cassette Beasts game, players will have unreasonably high expectations for it. Its honestly daunting! Cassette Beasts did well, but it didnt do so well that we can hire a team of 20 and make a full 3D game! And in any case, thats not how we like to work. We like working in a small and scrappy team of 2-3, and want to keep it that way! On the upside, I think that expectations for a second game would be less specific than they were for Cassette Beasts. Now that CB fans have seen monster-collecting RPGs dont have to strictly follow the Pokmon formula, we can afford ourselves more freedom to innovate. If we do another, that is. Theres a lot more I could say about the design of Cassette Beasts, and the thought process behind it, but Ill leave it here today. Until next time! ~ Tom @ Bytten Studio
I welcome you all, the time draws near...
Come one, come all, to Brightside Pier!
Without further ado, you can now grab the new Cassette Beasts DLC, "Pier of the Unknown" on all platforms! Just a reminder as to what comes with this awesome addition:
A new storyline to unravel
A spooky new location with three carnival-themed attractions to uncover and explore
12 new monsters that can only be found and recorded within Brightside Pier
Five new character cosmetic options
This DLC brings the total number of monsters to 141, meaning you can now form 19,881 monster fusions!
Check out the brand new launch trailer below:
[previewyoutube=eJUgQ36sqLI;full][/previewyoutube]
Let us know what you think of the new content by joining us on Discord!
For those new to Cassette Beasts, you'll collect awesome monsters to use during turn-based battles in this open-world RPG. Combine any two monster forms using Cassette Beasts Fusion System to create unique and powerful new ones!
Welcome to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by strange creatures youve only dreamed of, nightmares you hopefully havent, and a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home youll need to explore every inch of the island, and record monsters to your trusty cassette tapes to gain their abilities!
For those wondering, the Multiplayer Update is still in development and arriving as a free update for all platforms at a later date. Thanks so much for all your comments, reviews and kind words - the positivity from our community has helped make this possible! Once again, you can come and chat about Cassette Beasts with us and with our community on the official Discord server!
Until next time!
Greetings Beasts' collectors!
We're here, a half-year after our launch on Steam with new Updates, Quality of Life, and Bug fixes to make your experience in Cassette Beasts even better!
Weve jumped from 1.2 to 1.5 to keep version numbers consistent across platforms (Switch was already on 1.4!).
New Additions:
- Added a button to view the names and descriptions of status effects in battle when using a controller. This was previously only possible if you were using a mouse.
- Added a colour-blind accessibility option to change health bars from green/red to blue/orange.
- Added an audio setting to mute transformation sound effects.
- If you have more than 200 items in a single tab in the inventory, the tab will be automatically split into pages of 50 items each to aid in navigating large numbers of stickers.
- Several filtering options have been added to the sticker inventory: Name, Rarity, Category, and Elemental Type.
- A Bulk Recycle button has been added to the sticker inventory. It can be used when a filter is set, and recycles every sticker that matches the current filters.
- Fixed Intercept not affecting team-target attacks affected by Unitarget.
- Fixed status effects ticking down twice on the round that you fuse.
- Fixed an NPC in Harbourtown who sometimes spawned underground.
- Fixed Kayleighs name not being displayed when she talks for Barkley in post-boss cutscenes set in the cafe.
- Fixed inconsistent music near the Cherry Meadow cave.
- Fixed monsters with Vampire healing from 0 HP when they should be defeated.
- Fixed Ghostly and Gambit killing player characters if they record a monster while the status has 1 turn left.
- Fixed Resonance not overloading if you use Dog Years to double it.
- Fixed some geometry that could get a player temporarily stuck under a walkway in the Abandoned Mine in the marsh.
- Fixed Violas quest not becoming complete if you defeated the storys final boss before finishing it.
- Fixed player characters sleeves periodically resetting to long sleeves regardless of selected top.
- Controls in the inventory have been changed to LB/PgUp and RB/PgDn to switch tabs, to become consistent with other tabbed UIs. Left/Right can be used to jump up and down the list like PgUp/PgDn used to.
- Added some text to the controller select screen to help new players figure out what they need to do to enable and start local co-op.
- Added a dialog to confirm the players decision to flee before actually attempting to flee.
- Added a hard limit of 2500 to the number of stacks of stickers players can keep in their inventory. This should help keep memory use from getting so large it causes saving to fail. Any stickers you pick up past that limit, that dont stack with stickers you already have, are dropped until youre back under the limit. This wont automatically erase any stickers you already have past the limit when you load a file, but you will need to recycle some to be able to pick up more stickers.
- The game now keeps 2 previous versions of each save file in addition to the current file itself. If it detects that the most recent version is corrupt, it will automatically attempt to load one of the backups instead.
[previewyoutube=tvEJQ7ySeP0;full][/previewyoutube] Check out our audio deep dive by composer, Joel Baylis, during today's Save and Sound event on Steam! Until next time!
Hey y'all!
We have some very exciting news for Cassette Beasts - just in time for the spooky season!
Charge your oversized flashlights and steel your nerves for Pier of the Unknown, a new DLC for Cassette Beasts, is coming to all platforms on October 4th! This DLC includes:
- A spooky new location - Brightside Pier - which contains multiple attractions to explore!
- A new storyline to unravel!
- 12 new monsters that can only be found and collected within Brightside Pier!
- Five new character costume options!
This new expansion for Cassette Beasts brings the total number of monsters to 141, meaning you can now form 19,881 unique fusions! (we don't, however, recommend attempting this) Check out the new trailer below! [previewyoutube=gq7NeWB1Vzc;full][/previewyoutube] This DLC will be available for 6.99 USD/6.89 EUR/5.89 GBP/29 CYN/800 JPY. You can wishlist the DLC on its store page here! Which monsters will you be bringing to Brightside Pier next month? Let us know in the comments! ~ Bytten Studio
Hey y'all!
We're excited to announce that Cassette Beasts will be participating in this year's digital Save & Sound Event! If you don't know, Save & Sound is an online music festival that celebrates video-game music in all its forms! It is a 3-day live music show that includes Steam sales, exclusive demos, and a stream featuring lots of exclusive live performances!
You can watch the stream here!
As part of Save & Sound's live show, Cassette Beasts composer Joel Baylis will be making an appearance to give some exclusive musical performances and show off a behind-the-scenes look at his process!
You can watch it on Wednesday September 13th @ 11am PDT / 2pm EDT / 7pm BST.
There's plenty of awesome shows to tune into during Save & Sound - it's going to be a great event!
That's all from us for now - however, we'll have some big news this week so keep an eye out! In the mean time, you can always catch us on the official Discord!
Until next time!
Good day, Tamers! We wanted to share our trailers from the Monster Taming Direct, aired yesterday, for both Cassette Beasts and our Raw Fury family game, Moonstone Island! [previewyoutube=JLoTuqxj8aE;full][/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=DjL7YquB3Fc;full][/previewyoutube] ~ Bytten Studio and Raw Fury
Welcome, Remix Enthusiasts! We're going to be a part of the Monster Taming Direct on September 4th at 1:00 PM PT/4:00 PM ET/22:00 CEST with a new video, including a message from the devs directly to our fans! [previewyoutube=-Go6S1ERBfo;full][/previewyoutube] Don't forget to check out a title from our Raw Fury family, Moonstone Island, also included in the event! See you Monday! ~ Studio Bytten and Raw Fury
You heard us right! Cassette Beasts will be on sale for 25% off until Sunday at 1:00 PM PT/4:00 PM ET/22:00 CEST to try before you buy!
For those new to the game, come join us on Discord at https://discord.gg/byttenstudio for tips on Fusions and how to navigate the world!
See you in New Wirral!
~ Bytten Studio
Everyone!
We are still catching up with all the love we felt from yesterdays Cassette Beasts Showcase, where we discussed everything past, present and the future for the game and we are pumped about what's in store for Cassette Beasts. We highly encourage everyone to take a look at the show currently airing here on Steam or here: https://youtu.be/QOMkvnoCCe0. For you who enjoy the written format check out the recap below.
Before that however: Steam Summer Sale! We are celebrating the arrival of Summer with a sweet deal for you or your friend to pick up Cassette Beasts! You are able to pick up the game with 20% discount all the way until July 13! Spread the word, spread the love!
Speaking of summer, we are going to get a few weeks of rest after an absolute blast of a spring. It will go down in memory as one of the most intensely fun periods of our lives, yet this is only the beginning! We will return in August with more news about the stuff we announced in the showcase. For now: have a fantastic summer everyone!
~ Bytten Studio and the Raw Fury team
If you want to know what announcements were made during the Cassette Beasts Showcase, here's a breakdown:
The 1.2 Catacombs content update is now live!
The update also includes a series of performance and visual updates for consoles in addition to the new content coming for all platforms. Youll get to delve deeper and discover a few treasures thought to be lost to the age of time!
- A new hidden location - can you find the abandoned mine?
- 8 new monsters to find, including 3 alternate remastered forms of existing monsters, 4 new monsters to discover in the world, and a secret unique monster!
- 10 new moves, including a new attack, several moves centered around new status effects, and 4 new passives.
Multiplayer is coming to Cassette Beasts!
Online multiplayer is coming to Cassette Beasts! Now in active development, were super excited to announce these features that will be arriving in future as a free update for all versions of Cassette Beasts:
- Go adventuring with up to 8 friends!
- Trade tapes with each other!
- Challenge your friends to battles with various custom rulesets!
- Team up in raid battles against Rogue Fusions!
Venture to the Pier of the Unknown!
Announced at the Showcase, Pier of the Unknown is an upcoming DLC expansion for Cassette Beasts. What is this all about? Youll have to just wait and see
Cassette Beasts Soundtrack: Physical Release!
Youve asked for it! Weve partnered with Black Screen Records for a physical release of the Cassette Beasts soundtrack by Joel Baylis! With both a 2-disc vinyl and a cassette tape release (of course!) this is an awesome way to enjoy the bangin tunes of Cassette Beasts! You can preorder these releases here!
Plushes!
Weve had a lot of requests for monster plushes, so were happy to announce were working with the cool folks at Symbiote Studios on a line of Cassette Beasts plushes! On the Showcase, we showed a sneak peek at the Pombomb plush! We cant wait for these - well keep the community updated on what other monsters will be available, and when theyll be available to preorder!
Wow, thats a whole lot of stuff, huh? Theres a lot of cool stuff happening with Cassette Beasts, and we wouldnt be able to do it without the continued support and enthusiasm from our community. Thanks for all the support so far - were really happy youre all along for the Cassette Beasts journey with us! If you want to discuss this in our community, you should swing by the official Discord, our official subreddit and follow us on Twitter! Until next time!
Hello, everyone!
[previewyoutube=_HR4rkbXNpE;full][/previewyoutube]
We have a super exciting content update for Cassette Beasts coming at you! In the free 1.2 Catacombs content update you get to delve deeper and discover a few treasures thought to be lost to the age of time:
A new hidden location, can you find the Abandoned Mine?
Eight new monsters to find:
- 3 alternate remastered forms of existing monsters
- 4 new monsters to discover in the world, including the metal-type spider beast Ferriclaw!
- One secret unique monster
10 new moves, including a new attack, several moves centered around new status effects, and 4 new passives
If your update didnt start automatically, make sure you have version 1.2.0 to be able to play the new content.
Good luck and happy playing!
/ The team at Bytten Studio and Raw Fury
Full Patch Notes
New Features:
- Added the Abandoned Mine location
- Added 8 new monsters
- Added 10 new moves
Fixed:
- Fixed a bug that allowed Steam Deck players to exit the controllers menu without assigning any controllers to a playable character, which would cause the game to stop responding to input.
- Fixed Tower Defence colour change persisting even after switching to another tape.
- Fixed Landkeeper NPCs remaining in the Landkeeper HQ after Mammons rematch.
- Fixed Landkeeper NPCs in the Landkeeper HQ being interactive even though they do nothing.
- Fixed the camera swinging around a lot unnecessarily at the back of Cherry Meadow.
- Fixed the inventory allowing you to use an item you have 0 of (in battle).
- Fixed Glass Shards going invisible but continuing to take effect when the fusion its attached to de-fuses.
- Fixed ItemDrops being interacted with and picked up multiple times if the interact button is repeatedly pressed very quickly.
- Fixed players being able to clip through walls and warps in the Cherry Cross Station elevator when the framerate is low.
- Fixed Frankies tape remastering into the wrong type (when remastering would normally change a tapes type).
- Fixed a potential (albeit unreported) crash that could occur if you enter a building after getting the Harbourtown gate key before continuing with the rest of the tutorial.
- Fixed the Coal Story move having the Status Effect category instead of Ranged Attack.
- Fixed the merchant music track not looping correctly.
- Fixed the in-game Real Life Awaits achievement not unlocking.
- Fixed some of Violas dialogue after completion of her quest playing out in the wrong order.
- Fixed Captain Judass rematch using the wrong music.
- Fixed Barkley having a regular Fire-type Pombomb tape instead of the intended Ice-type bootleg Pombomb.
- Fixed post-game human enemies fusing with monsters created by Fission Power, which would lead to a very difficult battle as they then fully heal and re-fuse any time you de-fuse them.
- Fixed a sticker duplication bug.
- Fixed archangel minions being recordable.
- Fixed Jellyton and Coaldron having a Max AP of 8 instead of the intended 10.
- Fixed the item randomisation seed not being saved.
Other Changes:
- Bootlegs can no longer be defeated on round 0 by the Bulletino Cartridge Shard or Random/Custom Starter stickers.
- Removed positional audio from the UI, which can sound and behave strangely on some surround sound setups.
- Added a workaround that should avoid softlock caused by Cheat Engine breaking the ranger noticeboard when spawning in tons of fused material.
- When saving, the game now attempts to verify the new file before overwriting the old one, which should help avoid corrupting files when things go wrong.
- Added a crate to Mt Wirral to make a certain version of Morgantes song easier to accomplish.
Hello, everyone! Thanks for taking a break from your collecting and open worlding to join us this week! Were beyond excited to announce two things: The 1.2 Catacombs update is coming next week for all platforms, as well as another thing weve been working on for a few weeks in the background:
Introducing the Cassette Beasts Showcase!
Airing next week on the 28th of June, 17.00 CEST / 8am PDT / 11am EST / 4pm BST, join us as we take a look at the 1.2 Catacombs Update (and its release date), chat about the game, and announce some future game content plans as well! To cap it all off, therell be a live musical performance from Joel Baylis and Shelby Harvey, the musical team behind the awesome Cassette Beasts soundtrack! Theres so much packed into the showcase including new [strike][REDACTED][/strike] so be sure not to miss it! Sign up for the YouTube premiere here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOMkvnoCCe0 and youll receive a notification the minute we go live!
Thanks again for all your support and we hope youre looking forward to everything coming this year for Cassette Beasts. Until next week, play on! ~ Bytten Studio & Raw Fury
Hey everyone! We hope youve been enjoying Cassette Beasts these past few months as much as weve enjoyed reading your thoughts, reviews and feedback! Weve been putting the finishing touches on a new content update for all platforms that weve previously teased, and we're super happy to announce that the 1.2 Catacombs Update will be coming soon!
The update will have new content for the game (including new monsters and stickers) for all platforms, as well as visual and performance improvements on the games console versions.
Whilst we dont want to give away too much at this point (there's more info to come!), heres a sneak peek at one of the brand new monsters coming in the Catacombs update!
Ferriclaw #126
Element: Metal
French: Ferrigriff
Italian: Ferrichela
German: Ferroklaue
Spanish: Ferrigarra
Brazilian Portuguese: Mascaranha
The mysterious Ferriclaws have only recently been discovered on New Wirral. These giant spider-like creatures seem to wear ancient death masks on their heads Creepy! Their web spinning abilities allow them to stop their prey dead in their tracks.
Were hoping to have a release date soon, alongside other announcements to come - stay tuned for something exciting we have in the works regarding this!
To celebrate the official reveal of the Catacombs Update, were throwing a flash sale for Cassette Beasts! The game will be 20% off on Steam until the end of the week! Get it before its too late!
And thats all for now! Once again, please keep leaving us reviews as it really helps us out - dont forget to follow us on Twitter and join our official Discord too!
Until next time!
Hi everyone!
We are thrilled to announce Cassette Beasts is out on consoles! That's right, now you can discover all the secrets that New Wirral holds on Xbox Consoles and Nintendo Switch, so we have a little celebratory surprise!
We are aware that some of you were not able to get the launch code during Cassette Beasts' release on Steam, so we are happy to announce that LAUNCHCODE is active again, so run and get your traffikrab!!
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your HUGE support. We are on cloud nine with all the compliments Cassette Beasts is getting, so we hope you like what's to come in the future!
See you, as always, on New Wirral!
Greetings Beasts' collectors!
Two weeks have passed since the release of Cassette Beasts and we continue working to solve some bugs that you have been reporting in the last weeks.
Here are all the fixes and changes included in the 1.1.3 hotfix:
World
- Fixed some collisions in the cave under the hill in the park, and next to some stairs in Eastham Woods that could get the player character stuck until the player fast travels away.
- Fixed missing campsite icon in Cherry Meadow.
- Fixed a bug that allowed entering the Landkeeper HQ without Eugene.
- Fixed a glitch that allowed players to momentarily penetrate locked gates and hidden doors to activate a warp on the other side, which often led to softlock issues.
- Fixed a spawner in the Harbourtown Outskirts sometimes spawning monsters partially buried in the ground.
- Fixed monsters stopping spawning if you lose to Ianthe.
- Fixed uncommon and rare variants of Stab In The Dark never spawning.
- Fixed unique roamers (Glaistain, Kunkeo, etc.) appearing as bootlegs in the overworld if you have a bootleg of the same species in your party.
Battle - Monsters and abilities
- Fixed Bloodlust not raising Ranged Attack.
- Fixed Bloodlust activating twice when defeating a human enemy.
- Fixed glitter attacks permanently transmuting Abramacabra Walls and Air Walls created by Fire-on-Air chemistry (an effect that persisted between battles).
- Fixed the final boss appearing invisible if you didnt defeat the archangel in Falldown Mall.
- Fixed Miss Mimic fusions not being affected by ritual candles, but still consuming them.
- Fixed Delegate transferring certain status effect that definitely should not be transferred (e.g. Summoned).
- Fixed Conductive Cures not working.
- Fixed partner characters not healing between final battle attempts, which causes them not to transform the second time around.
- Fixed inability to fuse after cancelling an order in battle.
- Fixed AP Steals preview suggesting it poisons Plant-type targets.
- Fixed Splinter and Contact Damage taking effect even for non-damaging moves.
Crashes and softlocks
- Fixed softlocks in the Titania shipwreck, Glowcester Road Station, and Waterloop Station.
- Fixed a softlock that can occur if you enter battle with only one working tape on the main character, then respool the partners tape, and then break the main characters tape. This also fixes a similar issue during a certain post-game battle alongside a ranger captain.
- Fixed a crash that can be caused by talking to certain NPCs in west Harbourtown multiple times over multiple days.
- Fixed a bug that allowed the game to exit while saving, which came with a risk of corrupting files. (This does not prevent file corruption through sudden loss of power, disk failure, or other hardware or OS issues.)
- Fixed softlocks that can occur if you move an NPC that needs to walk to you during a cutscene off the screen (e.g. the commune doorman).
- Fixed a crash that can be caused by talking to certain NPCs in west Harbourtown multiple times over multiple days.
- Fixed Copy That allowing transformation into Archangel minions, which causes a crash if you attempt to fuse.
- Fixed the game locking up if you battle a monster that is drowning or falling into the void.
Cutscenes
- Fixed a couple of ways characters could get stuck on geometry while moving during a cutscene.
- Fixed the potential for the player character to get stuck on Felixs head in a cutscene in Felixs house.
- Fixed a cutscene at the end of the Mourningtown commune attempting to play a second time and softlocking the player.
Stickers & Items
- Improved descriptions of the Bulletino Cartridge Shard, Boltam Fur, and Jumpkin Seed.
- Fixed Olive-Ups and Upgrapes recycling for 25000 wheat. They can now be recycled for 1000.
- Fixed partner tapes having the wrong type when doing a randomiser run (or switching from a randomiser-run to a regular run).
- Fixed purchasing a tape with an ability from Wilma in randomiser mode causing the UI to lock up if you hit cancel with very precise timing.
- Fixed only the first Custom Starter / Automation sticker working properly if you have multiple on one tape.
Other fixes
- Fixed a handful of reported translation errors and typos.
- Fixed the vocals version of the Rogue Fusion battle music not looping at the correct point.
- Fixed the quantity selection dialogue in the merchant interface losing focus to background buttons if you hold up or down.
Quality of Life Changes
- Combined the quest and rumour logs. Rumours are now listed underneath the quests, instead of in a separate tab. This should make them easier to find for new players.
- Reaction and status effect descriptions can now be viewed from the in-game type chart.
- Improved map markers for a number of quests and rumours.
- The game now leaves behind backup files when it saves, so that players can manually restore a file if it was corrupted by sudden power loss.
- Sticker rarity and attributes are now deterministic if playing a custom mode game with a set seed.
- Disabled the Ctrl-Q keyboard shortcut (except when the debug console is enabled), because its too easy to accidentally enter this while climbing and quit the game.
We wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone playing, reviewing, and sharing Cassette Beasts! To have hit Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam so quickly is an incredible and humbling message to us!
We are incredibly grateful for the staggering support and enthusiasm you've shown following the launch.
Your feedback, thoughts, and encouragement have played a vital role in the development and we couldn't have done it without you, our amazing community, standing by our side every step of the way.
As we continue to work on updates, improvements, and fixes, here are a few things for the short term:
- The demo is being removed from Friday, May 5th, this is so we can focus on one thing, the main game, and not have to divert focus on maintaining multiple games.
- We have gathered and collected a few resources for players encountering issues and problems, check out the new troubleshooting guide we have devised here: https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/wiki/Troubleshooting
- We are creating an open beta Steam branch for players that want the latest updates as fast as possible. This branch can be unstable as this will be the code and content that our internal testers help evaluate before we deploy it as a stable build use at your own discretion and please note that, while we want to avoid breaking save files we cannot guarantee this branch is problem free! https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/wiki/Steam_Daily
Thank you all for the incredible reception so far, and thank you all for your feedback and submitting bug reports as well as commenting on the forums! We are listening and we have a first hotfix to fix and address some of the issues youve encountered!
Fixed:
- Fixed a bug that let players skip fusing during the battle against Morgante at the end of the tutorial.
- Fixed a bug that allowed monsters that were already defeated (under certain circumstances) to be recorded.
- Fixed the buttons on the 3D cassette player menu in battle grabbing focus if the mouse is hovering them, even when the mouse isnt moving.
- Fixed a bug that can cause the player character to dash even when the dash button isnt held, after disconnecting and reconnecting a controller.
- Fixed a bug that could cause stickers to be erased when moving them (without peel and/or apply) to an empty slot at the end of a tapes list.
- Fixed a bug that caused achievements for 5 heart events to not be unlocked. This fix will retroactively unlock the achievements for save files that were affected.
- Fixed a bug that could cause Kayleighs Sirenade to be duplicated over the players starter tape.
- Fixed a minor visual misalignment of highlighted map cells in the minimap.
- Fixed a bug that let players use multiple rewinds in a single turn by cancelling an order while the rewind is animating.
Other Changes:
- Upon starting or completing a quest, the game now automatically tracks a suitable quest if you are not already tracking a quest that displays markers on the map. This should help keep new players from becoming lost.
- Minor improvements to the Portuguese Brazil localisation.
[previewyoutube=_OLST_Fw5Ms;full][/previewyoutube]
We are beyond excited to release Cassette Beasts, a journey that started together with you almost 2 years (and longer before then!). We couldn't have reached this point without the incredible support and enthusiasm from each and every one of you! Your valuable feedback, sharing your experiences, and spreading the word about our game have been truly instrumental in making Cassette Beasts what it is today, and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it!
If you want to stay in touch, join our discord or head over to the forums we would love to hear your feedback and how we can develop Cassette Beasts further. AND! This is only the beginning, we will talk more about what's next in store Soon!
Adventure. Battle. Transform.
Collect awesome monsters to use during turn-based battles in this open-world RPG. Combine any two monster forms using Cassette Beasts Fusion System to create unique and powerful new ones!
Welcome to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by strange creatures youve only dreamed of, nightmares you hopefully havent, and a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home youll need to explore every inch of the island, and record monsters to your trusty cassette tapes to gain their abilities!
With only a week left until we release, we are doing a last roundup blog of all the content we have talked about in the past weeks as well as a short guide to get started on your adventure into New Wirral!
Volume 2: A guide to New Wirral by Professor Percival Hoylake
STRATEGIZE
In combat, elemental advantages dont give bonus damage but do inflict status effects depending on the combination. Status effects in general are very useful - so be sure to use buffs, debuffs and elemental walls to get ahead!
GO OFF PATH
After the prologue, the world of New Wirral will be yours to explore as you please. Whilst some areas will be higher level than others, you arent prevented from exploring areas at your own leisure.
ASK AROUND
If you would like some direction then you can collect Rumours from people in Harbourtown that will give you level-appropriate places to check out.
GET BACK UP
On the island you will encounter various monsters in different areas, not every area might be suitable for you with your current experience. If things are too tough, remember that you can level up, unlock new abilities, and Remaster your monster forms into powerful new versions with a bit of exploring in the world.
GEAR UP
There are several shops in New Wirral, it's always a good idea to visit them to upgrade your gear such as the amount of Rewinds you can carry Or find new Stickers you can attach to your monster tape for new moves and attacks! Lastly, if you ever need a refresher or want to know more about the details of our game you can always check out the wiki: https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/wiki/Main_Page
Roundup Blog
Open World
This kinda goes without saying! In Cassette Beasts you record monsters forms onto cassette tapes, which you can then use in battle to transform yourself into that monster. There are 120 monster forms to collect. The people of Harbourtown love to share Rumours and hearsay - there are not many forms of entertainment available to them after all! When youre not sure where to explore or what to attempt next, the rumours you pick up in Harbourtown will always contain good suggestions. Following up on rumours almost always leads directly to progress in your main quests, which dont always on their own tell you where you need to go. Of course if you prefer to stumble blindly around the island without a clue, thats always an option! Collecting rumours is suggested for first-time players, but completely optional.
Archangels?
If youve played the demo to the end, you will have seen the start of the main quest in Cassette Beasts. Skip this section if you prefer to avoid spoilers for the demo! At the end of the demo Kayleigh and the player battle a strange otherworldly creature called Morgante, who is known as an Archangel to the people of New Wirral - and they act as bosses. With the last of her energy, Morgante gives the player a song, whose lyrics promise to show the way to leave New Wirral. However, most of the song is too quiet to make out! To complete the song and find your way home youll need to encounter more Archangels, but well nobody really knows where they are - or how many! Perhaps the rumours in Harbourtown contain some clues.
Friendships and Romance
Kayleigh and Eugene are introduced as unlockable partner characters early in the game, but there are also four others you can find around New Wirral! If the first step towards building a friendship with someone is finding them and unlocking them as a companion, the second is completing a quest with them! Completing their quest bumps you up to relationship level 1, which unlocks your ability to fuse with them in battle. At relationship level 5 you gain the ability to romance your companion. Its completely optional, with no gameplay benefits, but its cute!
Strategic Moves
Suffice to say, there's lots of moves in Cassette Beasts that you can use to get the upper hand in battle, and lots of strategies to try! Different status effects will have positive Buff effct and some will have a negative debuff effect. A Buff effect example is a Wall. This is a type of status effect that can be used in battle and take a certain amount of hits for you, and also can trigger elemental reactions. An example of a move that interacts with a Wall the move ""Throw"". When used with an active wall, it turns that wall into a damaging projectile that inherits the element of the wall thrown! There are a ton of different interacts and strategies to use in Cassette Beasts!
Rogue Fusions & Bootlegs
When you battle a Rogue Fusion you first have to get its HP to 0 to split it apart into the two monsters that make it up. Then you can record them if you want, or otherwise just defeat them! Bootlegs are rare type and colour-swapped variants of ordinary monsters. Bootlegs movepools are modified to match their new type, and they have a higher than normal chance of spawning uncommon and rare variants of moves.
Upgrade Yourself
Ranger Wilma is an essential part of the Rangers organisation. Certain scarce items and upgrades, invaluable in the pursuit of Archangels, are stored and distributed by Wilma from the Rangers HQ in Harbourtown. The more your training under the Captains progresses, the more shell be able to provide you with.
MODDING!
We actually had this in store as a surprise but we couldnt keep ourselves from letting you all know! Cassette Beasts will be open up for a completely new type of community driven interaction and development as we invite you to be part of creating the best, most unique and fantastic experience there is - together. Cassette Beasts will however not support Workshop at launch (we continuously investigate if we are able to enable this in the future), as we are ironing out a lot of question marks.
Postgame
The postgame in Cassette Beasts is surprisingly big! To give you a taste, heres a quick rundown:
- Optional Bosses: I wont say too much, but there are a number of hidden bosses on New Wirral that can be battled when certain conditions are met.
- Rematches: The Ranger Captains were holding back the first time you battled them. In the post-game you can rematch them at full strength. Expect surprises!
- Ranger Noticeboard: If youve completed your training with the Ranger Captains and become a full-time ranger yourself, you get access to a new series of quests on this noticeboard. These quests progress a new story exploring the cause and origin of Rogue Fusions, as well as introduce new unique monsters, and brand new characters who have arrived on the island! The bulk of the postgame content is accessed through the noticeboard.
Did you miss our AMA session yesterday? No worries, we got you covered!
Check the full thread on Reddit to see all community questions answered by Jay and Tom, developers of Cassette Beasts HERE We hope you enjoy it!
Hey again! With only a few weeks left until we release we are very excited to share more news! Last week we shared a new version of the Date Announcement trailer (including some new Ranger footage at the end!) from the Indie Showcase show over at Xbox that is available at the end of this post, its pretty cool so check it out.. If youd like!
Anyhow, back to some news and awesome features and things surrounding the game that we have managed to get in for launch!
Deluxe Edition
We are excited to announce that the Cassette Beasts: Original Soundtrack, Cassette Beasts: The Art Book and the Cassette Beasts: Cosplay Pack will be available as part of the Cassette Beasts: Deluxe Edition! Pretty rad, eh!?
The Cassette Beasts: Deluxe Edition will include a bunch of extras (that you can also purchase separately), lets take a look at what those are, shall we?
Cassette Beasts
This is the base game. Of course that's included! Explore New Wirral, record monsters and uncover the mysteries of the Archangels!
Cassette Beasts: Cosplay Pack DLC
We figured you would love some additional ways to express yourself even more than all the options already included in the base game and at the same time have the option of additional future development support for Cassette Beasts. This cosmetic pack offers no gameplay additions but rather focuses on a few additional items for more cute looks inspired by some of the monsters on the Island.
For the true Traffikrab appreciator...
Cassette Beasts: The Original Soundtrack
I hate video game music and I want to drown in this soundtrack. - TheGamer.com The music in Cassette Beasts is essential for the whole experience and a lot in the game is about blasting these 80/90s inspired tunes whilst figuring out why music also is important for the story in Cassette Beasts. In the Soundtrack, composed by Joel Baylis, you will find 65 (!) tracks with a strong 80s vibe and amped up style in regular and lossless formats.
Cassette Beasts: The Art Book
We spent hours and hours to create 120 unique monsters based on mythology, superstition and fairytales. In this artbook you will find the original high resolution concept art for every monster in Cassette Beasts, as well as more detailed explanations of how they came to be and inspirations behind each one! Please note: Cassette Beasts: The Art Book is in English only, and comes in .pdf file format.
Pricing
We've had a lot of folks asking us how much the game is going to cost - so we thought we'd clear that up and add it to our frequently asked questions! Cassette Beasts will cost:
$19.99 / 19.99 / 16.75
or local equivalent. The Deluxe Edition will be offered at a package discount price and the deal will cost:
$30.50 / 30.50 / 26 *
or local equivalent. *Due to it being a bundle, this price may vary slightly!
But thats not all Announcing MODDING!?
We actually had this in store as a surprise but we couldnt keep ourselves from letting you all know. Tom has spent a tremendous amount of time, figuring out a ton of challenges, to be able to share the amazing news: Cassette Beasts will launch with a mod loader. This means Cassette Beasts will open up for a completely new type of community driven interaction and development as we invite you to be part of creating the best, most unique and fantastic experience there is - together. Cassette Beasts will however not support Workshop at launch (we continuously investigate if we are able to enable this in the future), as we are ironing out a lot of question marks. We will add the full user guide to the wiki how this will work for players wanting to install mods as well as for those of you who want to create some! For now, we have an early wiki guide for installing mods!
Thanks a ton for reading this week! Next week we will go into a some great tips for new players to get started on New Wirral as well as a roundup blog! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E09ET2j0Y4
Join us and bring your burning questions as we will be hosting an AMA session over at /r/JRPG!
With two weeks left to go until release we look forward to putting your last uncertainties to rest or just to hang out and chat! Come join us April 13th at: 6am PDT / 9am EDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST See you then!
Hey y'all! Today I wanted to take a look at some of the strategic moves you can use in Cassette Beasts to get the edge in battle.
Let's jump into battle with-
Wait, what's that?
It's a Wall, a type of status effect that can be used in battle. Walls will take a certain amount of hits for you, and also can trigger elemental reactions.
The move Elemental Wall summons a wall based on the element of its user.
These walls can be used to absorb impending powerful attacks - extra useful against Archangels and their powerful Angelic Attacks!
Look - this Traffikrab's smack only damages the wall!
However, there's certain moves that have special synergies with each other - Such as the move "Throw". When used with an active wall, it turns that wall into a damaging projectile that inherits the element of the wall thrown!
This screenshot was taken moments before the Velocirifle was soundly defeated!
Suffice to say, there's lots of moves in Cassette Beasts that you can use to get the upper hand in battle, and lots of strategies to try! For example, a melee focused monster form like Palangolin can utilise the move Parry Stance, which will reflect the next melee attack that lands whilst active! However, unlike Walls, this will not stop ranged attacks.
This one is an uncommon sticker that also comes with a small healing bonus. Neat!
We hope that players experiment with varied strategies and status effects!
What strategies do you like to use in RPGs? Let us know in the official Discord, or follow us on our studio Twitter account!
Until next time!
We are happy to announce that Cassette Beasts will have Brazilian-Portuguese language support at launch! This is all thanks to you and your wishlisting support that have made us understand how incredible the Brazilian community is. Thank you so much for helping the game continue to grow and for your words of support. This shows that there is interest in playing the game in other regions of the world, and we can't wait to tell you all about what's coming to Cassette Beasts!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1321440/Cassette_Beasts/
Oh look! Pombomb is here with a new message, he seems really excited about this one so let's go ahead and rip open that envelope.
We are thrilled to finally be able to announce when you get to play and fuse monsters on PC April 26th! Cassette Beasts will be available on Consoles this spring. Mark your calendars as we prepare to embark to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by strange creatures youve only dreamed of!
Join a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home, youll need to explore every inch of the island and record monsters to your trusty cassette tapes to gain their abilities!
Oh wow! I can see why you ran so fast over here to deliver the news Pombomb! Thank you so much, you're the best boy and deserve all the treats!
While we let him settle down after all this excitement, let's check out our new trailer showcasing more from the game, a new awesome track and more fusions teased.
[previewyoutube=JBt-B5eT2h4;full][/previewyoutube]
Read more about the game on our website or, to keep up with all things Cassette Beasts, follow our Twitter and Tiktok or pop over and chat with both the devs and fans alike on Discord!
We couldn't be more excited to share this experience with you all; it would help us immensely to wishlist and spread the word with your friends!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1321440/
Hey folks! Everyone knows that an open world is only as good as the things that you can do in that open world So this week were giving you a peek at some of the things you can do in Cassette Beasts!
Collect Monster Forms
This kinda goes without saying! In Cassette Beasts you record monsters forms onto cassette tapes, which you can then use in battle to transform yourself into that monster. There are 120 monster forms to collect.
Professor Hoylake, who you might have already heard in our Friendship Games Week trailer, has taken on the task of categorising the monster species of New Wirral. However he seems reluctant to do the footwork himself, and leaves it all to you!
Rumours
The people of Harbourtown love to share rumours and hearsay - there are not many forms of entertainment available to them after all! When youre not sure where to explore or what to attempt next, the rumours you pick up in Harbourtown will always contain good suggestions. Every rumour you hear is tracked in a tab in your quest log until you've investigated it (or it has become irrelevant some other way).
Following up on rumours almost always leads directly to progress in your main quests, which dont always on their own tell you where you need to go. Rumours are our answer to the problems of open world maps littered with icons. As well as the issues of visual overcrowding and choice paralysis, some open world RPGs show icons that arent actionable, i.e. icons for activities that the player isnt high enough level to take on yet, or doesnt have the necessary movement abilities to even reach. Whereas in Cassette Beasts every rumour you hear is tailored towards your level and ability. Of course if you prefer to stumble blindly around the island without a clue, thats always an option! Collecting rumours is suggested for first-time players, but completely optional.
Archangels?
If youve played the demo to the end, you will have seen the start of the main quest in Cassette Beasts. Skip to the section on Friendships and Romance if you prefer to avoid spoilers for the demo! At the end of the demo Kayleigh and the player battle a strange otherworldly creature called Morgante, who is known as an Archangel to the people of New Wirral. With the last of her energy, Morgante gives the player a song, whose lyrics promise to show the way to leave New Wirral. However, most of the song is too quiet to make out!
To complete the song and find your way home youll need to encounter more Archangels, but well nobody really knows where they are - or how many! Perhaps the rumours in Harbourtown contain some clues. These can be truly difficult battles if youre not prepared. Often its not enough to simply be a higher level. Youll need to know your foe, and prepare a strategy in advance. If youre smart enough to figure out the clues in the song you might not have to fight them all though Each Archangel has a dungeon of its own that becomes a new fast travel point after you discover it. Dungeons vary quite a lot in terms of size, puzzle, theme, and mechanics. Were looking forward to seeing which dungeons and which Archangels players like the most!
Vampires?
Again, if youve played to the end of the demo, youll have been introduced to these pale-faced fiends.
Are they really vampires like Eugene implies, or are they something much more nefarious? Helping Eugene clear out their strongholds spread across New Wirral should reveal the truth and help you get closer to Eugene!
Friendships and Romance
Kayleigh and Eugene are introduced as unlockable partner characters early in the game, but there are also four others you can find around New Wirral! If the first step towards building a friendship with someone is finding them and unlocking them as a companion, the second is completing a quest with them! Completing their quest bumps you up to relationship level 1, which unlocks your ability to fuse with them in battle.
After that, battling alongside them and periodically camping or going to the cafe with them, can get you to higher relationship levels. This makes your fusions even stronger, and unlocks the powerful Fusion Power move in battle!
At relationship level 5 you gain the ability to romance your companion. Its completely optional, with no gameplay benefits, but its cute! We wrote a bit more about this in a previous blog post!
Join the Rangers
We also wrote about this back in January. Harbourtowns Rangers exist to support the community. They maintain the town, manage supply lines and deliveries, and keep important routes safe for travel. Occasionally, more dangerous situations pop up, and these fall on the Ranger Captains--the highest ranking rangers--to resolve. The Captains are also responsible for training new recruits, and in your case that means battling! Each of the 12 Captains - stationed at different points around New Wirral - have tapes based around particular strategies they favour in battle. Like with Archangels, if youre not prepared with a strategy of your own it can be a difficult fight.
Stationed in New Wirral Park, Captain Wallace is most likely the first Captain youll face. We first showed him on our stream in December. His preferred strategy uses walls to block incoming attacks, so consider setting up your tapes with moves that will let you take them down quickly, otherwise youll get nowhere!
Rogue Fusions & Bootlegs
Rogue Fusions - unnaturally strong monsters that have fused - spawn randomly around New Wirral. Battling them is optional (until the postgame) but they yield certain valuable resources, and have a higher than normal chance of containing bootlegs. Bootlegs are rare type and colour-swapped variants of ordinary monsters. Bootlegs movepools are modified to match their new type, and they have a higher than normal chance of spawning uncommon and rare variants of moves.
When you battle a Rogue Fusion you first have to get its HP to 0 to split it apart into the two monsters that make it up. Then you can record them if you want, or otherwise just defeat them! There are several different kinds of Rogue Fusions besides the basic ones. Some of them surround themselves with a swarm of other monsters, while others seem to become more powerful in other ways If youre hunting bootlegs, youll definitely want to keep an eye out for these!
Upgrade Yourself
Ranger Wilma runs a little shop in the Town Hall that provides backpack and cassette player upgrades, as well as certain other items you can use to improve your characters strength. This is the perfect place to spend the Fused Material that Rogue Fusions drop!
Ranger Wilma is an essential part of the Rangers organisation. Certain scarce items and upgrades, invaluable in the pursuit of Archangels, are stored and distributed by Wilma from the Rangers HQ in Harbourtown. The more your training under the Captains progresses, the more shell be able to provide you with.
Abilities
Youll know this if youve played our demo, but recording certain monster forms also upgrades your human form with new abilities. In the demo, recording Dominoth gives you the ability to glide on butterfly wings.
There are six abilities to find in total. It may not be obvious which monsters give new abilities, or where to find them. But if you keep an ear out for rumours Im sure youll be zipping about like a bullet and climbing sheer cliff walls in no time! While youre not technically required to have the abilities to complete the main story (besides Mothwing Glide), there are plenty of locations you wont be able to visit without them.
Unique & Roaming Monsters
While we havent shown any of these to avoid spoiling the surprises, there are a number of unique monsters to find and record in Cassette Beasts. Each one has a special mechanic or gimmick all to itself, making them quite fun to face for the first time, or have in your party. You dont need to worry about accidentally defeating them the first time you encounter them. After a unique monster is defeated, it becomes a roaming monster. Roaming monsters spawn at different locations on different in-game days, and have a chance of spawning as a bootleg. Rumours may hint at their locations!
Postgame
The postgame in Cassette Beasts is surprisingly big! To give you a taste, heres a quick rundown: Optional Bosses: I wont say too much, but there are a number of hidden bosses on New Wirral that can be battled when certain conditions are met. Rematches: The Ranger Captains were holding back the first time you battled them. In the post-game you can rematch them at full strength. Expect surprises! Ranger Noticeboard: If youve completed your training with the Ranger Captains and become a full-time ranger yourself, you get access to a new series of quests on this noticeboard. These quests progress a new story exploring the cause and origin of Rogue Fusions, as well as introduce new unique monsters, and brand new characters who have arrived on the island! The bulk of the postgame content is accessed through the noticeboard. Of course anything you didnt finish off during the course of the main story is also still there for you to find and take on!
Randomisation & Speedrunning
We wrote about this in more detail here. Completing the game unlocks new custom game modes. This adds options like monster habitat randomisation, type randomisation, move randomisation, as well as permadeath.
Cassette Beasts has a built-in timer showing how long youve been playing your file on the screen - perfect for dipping your toes into speedrunning. For more advanced speedrunning players, the game also features LiveSplit integration (via the LiveSplit Server component), meaning the game can automatically send split commands when certain programmable conditions are met.
Whew, there sure is a lot to do in Cassette Beasts! Let us know what youre most looking forward to in the comments. Or if you want to know more, why not swing by the official Discord! And of course, you can always follow us on Twitter for future updates! Until next time!
Welcome to Cassette Beasts Developer Blog Roundup #3!
Tom and Jay here again to welcome to our third roundup blog! This time we'll chat about Custom Game Modes and the friends you'll meet in New Wirral.
Its dangerous to go alone in New Wirral, so Rangers encourage prospective adventurers to travel alongside a partner. In Cassette Beasts there are 6 partner characters to find and unlock. Once unlocked, they will happily travel and battle alongside you whenever you want.
If you need to swap who youre travelling with, just pop back to Harbourtowns Gramophone Cafe, where everybody meets up.
During local co-op multiplayer, the second player takes control of the active partner character. In battle, each player has exclusive control over a single character and gets to decide what move they use.
If youre playing alone, youll have control over both characters during battle, of course!
Let's meet some of these partners!
Kayleigh
If you played our Steam Next Fest demo, youll have met Kayleigh. She gives the player their first tape and explains some of the basics of life in New Wirral.
Meredith
Meredith is a sarcastic and antisocial Londoner who occupies herself repairing Harbourtowns electronics. She likes dumb action movies and bands with tragic backstories.
Eugene
Eugene, the self-proclaimed Protector of Harbourtown, also appeared in our Steam Next Fest Demo. When and where hes from isnt clear, other than his quest is to rid New Wirral of the undead but something doesnt quite seem right. Why are these vampires wearing suits?
As for the other partner characters, youll have to wait and see!
When you have a rest at a campsite (or in the cafe) your friend will usually have something to say. Every once in a while this triggers a social event that will progress your relationship with them to the next level. These social events increase the strength and abilities of your fusions by increasing the strength of your bond.
Choosing certain dialogue options can also lead to something more than friendship
Have you ever wondered what the Rangers of Harbourtown do? Well, its time for us to go into more detail
If you played our Steam Next Fest demo, youll already know the basics. At the beginning of Cassette Beasts, you wash up on the shore of New Wirral, an island on what seems to be another world. There you meet Kayleigh, a kind and friendly ranger, who takes you to Harbourtown and shows you the ropes.
Along the way, you and Kayleigh encounter a strange and otherworldly creature known to the residents of New Wirral only as an Archangel.
Finding more of these Archangels is the key to finding the way off New Wirral and back to your home world. But to survive them youll need to get stronger--and thats where the Rangers come in
Rangers
Harbourtowns Rangers exist to support the community. They maintain the town, manage supply lines and deliveries, and keep important routes safe for travel. Occasionally, more dangerous situations pop up, and these fall on the Ranger Captains--the highest ranking rangers--to resolve.
The Captains are also responsible for training new recruits, and in your case that means battling! Each of the 12 Captains has tapes based around a particular strategy they favour in battle. If youre not prepared with a strategy of your own it can be a difficult fight.
Postgame
If youve seen these bad boys in screenshots and videos before and wondered what they are, theyre what the Rangers call Rogue Fusions. Rogue Fusions are unnaturally strong monsters that have fused in the wild. Some Rogue Fusions surround themselves with a swarm of other monsters, and others seem to increase in power in other ways As a Ranger and a recognised combat pro itll be your job to keep them under control.
But why do they form, and why are they becoming more frequent and dangerous?
In the postgame, there are new monsters to encounter and record, and new bosses to fight. Each Ranger Captain can be rematched. This time they wont hold back, and will unleash their perfected strategies on you!
And of course if thats not enough for you, beating the game unlocks additional game modes...
Custom Game Modes
Once you've beaten the game, Cassette Beasts has a number of options you can use to customise your next playthrough.
While we recommend playing the game through normally on your first playthrough, these options can also be unlocked with a cheat code--handy if you're playing the game on a different machine at a speedrun competition! The cheat code will be shared after the game's release.
Let's go through these one by one:
- First up, we have "Tapes Break Permanently," which means that any tape with 0 hit points can't be repaired and will be unusable for the rest of your playthrough!
- "Defeat is Game Over," where a single loss in battle means game over no matter how many tapes you have left.
- "Randomise Monsters" lets you mix up the habitats of monsters, as well as the starter and partner tapes.
- "Randomise Types," my personal favourite, you can randomise monster species' types, as well as their colour palettes and movepools to match.
- "Randomise Moves". This option can be used to randomise the default set of moves for monsters, as well as the moves you unlock by upgrading tapes.
- "Random Seed" option, which can be used to control all the aforementioned randomisation options. It can also control the randomisation of certain variables in the game, even when no customisations are enabled perfect for speedruns.
We hope that this will make speedrunning Cassette Beasts fun and easy for people to get into. More information about how to configure the LiveSplit integration will be published on the wiki after the game releases.
That's all for this week, folks! To see more in detail, you can view the individual posts below. If you want to know more, why not swing by the official Discord! As well as that, you can always follow us on Twitter! for future updates!
- Cassette Beasts Blog #8 - Randomisation & Speedrunning
- Cassette Beasts Blog #10 - Meet the Rangers
- Cassette Beasts Blog #11 - Partners & Relationships
It's time for another monster showcase! You'll have seen some of these before, but perhaps not all of them! Why don't we take a look?
Sirenade #024
Element: Air French: Sirnade Italian: Sirenata German: Sirenade Spanish: Sirenata You've already seen this one before if you played our demo - Kayleigh's signature monster form Sirenade! Sirenades are particularly loud creatures, and can amplify their own singing voices through their microphone tails and wings. They dont seem to have much awareness as to whether or not their singing is too loud for those around them.
Muskrateer #061
Element: Beast French: Mousquerataire Italian: Muschettiere German: Moschketier Spanish: Mosqueterrata Muskrateers can often be found sharpening their swords on stones in the underground caves where they dwell. It is not uncommon to find them duelling any Squireys that happen to cross their paths. I also hear that they have remarkable balance!
Weevilite #012
Element: Plastic French: Lumicrabe Italian: Semaforello German: Rsselampel Spanish: Semaforgojo You might be able to guess - but this is one of the remastered forms of Traffikrab! The Weevilites long necks allow them to spot weaker monsters from afar, and by alternating flashes of their red and green eyes they can paralyse their prey with dizziness and mild migraines. This remastered form specialises in attack.
Terracooka #076
Element: Earth French: Terracuisto Italian: Terracotto German: Terrakocher Spanish: Terracocido Terracookas are aspiring chefs, and will attempt to cook with whatever ingredients they can find in their subterranean cave habitats. Unfortunately this means that most of their practiced recipes include lichen, moss, or both lichen and moss.
Elfless #066
Element: Ice French: Maskelfe Italian: Introvelfo German: Elflos Spanish: Elfolfo It's a fun Christmas Elf! ...It is fun, right? In order to hide their true emotions, Elfless fashion crude smiling masks out of tree bark. Unsubstantiated rumours claim that there is one day a year where all Elfless will assemble together to replace their old masks with new ones.
Macabra #028
Element: Beast French: Macabra Italian: Macabra German: Makabra Spanish: Macabra What's this fearsome thing?! The Macabra cannot see, but instead has the ability to taste the air around it for potential prey. It prefers to do so from a higher vantage point, and will often find a rock or animal skull to perch on whilst hunting.
OK, what does a fusion between Sirenade and Elfless look like, then?
Sirenless! Terrifying - I see! Well, that does it for this week. Which monster form would you transform into to battle? Come and let us know on our official Discord! You can always follow us on Twitter, too! Until next time!
Hello folks!
Wow! Thank you so much for all your questions! We had so many to answer that this will be a huge post, so strap in and let's take this journey of answers together!
Pombomb thanks you too! He worked so hard delivering all your messages, and we promise he'll get all the treats and pets he wants.
General
Various: When is it coming out? Tom: Itll come out when its finished Jay: Keep your eyes peeled for more information soon! Various: How long would it take for the average person to complete the game? Tom: Most first-time playthroughs take about 30 hours. However the open nature of the game can make this vary by quite a lot. I know some people who played for 50+ hours before beating it the first time. On subsequent playthroughs, when you know where various important things are, and when you know your way around the battle system, it isnt too difficult to get it down to 10 hours, and I'm sure speedrunners will get it down to sub-3 hours. Ace Nhiyr: Will there be any secret linkages between Lennas Inception [Bytten Studios previous game] and Cassette Beasts? Tom: Jay: You may have noticed a couple of nods in the demo - I wouldnt want to spoil any further ones! winfrey: How long have you been working on this game? Tom: Weve been working on it since late 2019, and first announced it in May 2020. Games take a lot of time to develop. If it seems like it's taking Cassette Beasts a long time to come out, it's only because we announced it so early! Raven: Did you ever steal a traffic cone? Tom: Weve all done things we regret. Why were cassettes the medium you picked for this story? Tom: Jay should answer this one! Jay: I think when youre trying to explain a fantastical concept such as transforming into monsters, you need to have something real to anchor that to. Popular media series that involve monster capturing and transforming all understand this - if you can imagine yourself with a magic deck of cards, or a morphing watch or belt, then you can start to properly imagine yourself doing it. The cassette tape fulfilling this function was the result of exploring what real world item we could use as the foundation for monster transformation. Theyre something a lot of people are familiar with, but are also cool and retro! Lewis: How will you celebrate the games release? Tom: Personally, Im going to take a few days off to spend time with my girlfriend. Its been a while since Ive had a proper holiday. I think Ill drink a lot of beer too. Cheers! Jay: Im going to go outside and touch grass. Solidwake: Have you had the game playtested by others or is that something you might consider? Tom: Yes, the game has been playtested by our friends and family, as well as Raw Furys testing team, their gamebreakers group, and the localisation team. Theyre all under NDA though, so dont start asking them about it. caiman: Are performance targets for the console versions finalized? Tom: Our targets are 60 FPS on Xbox Series and Steam Deck (as well as Windows/Linux for sufficiently powerful hardware), and a minimum of 30 FPS for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. Shikikan_Dawn: Will the soundtrack be available on Steam? It's lovely. Jay: Yes! Prof.McStevie: I'd love to know why you chose this particular art style, it's very pleasing and wanted to know the reasoning behind it :O Jay: Im a pixel artist by trade, so me working on a monster-collecting RPG was always going to involve pixel art. I was also really interested in the HD pixel art look that games have been starting to explore in recent years, so making that jump to 3D for the world made sense. Its the first 3D game Ive worked on! @EnigmonOfficial: Who did the assets for the world and are they available for work ? I love the 3D world with 2d sprites. It's very distinct and stands out. Jay: That was me - unfortunately Im busy making Cassette Beasts!
Monsters
Various: How many monsters are there? Tom: There are 120 regular monsters (including evolutions), giving 14400 fusions. If you want to count bootlegs (rare palette- and type-swapped monsters) as well, there are 1800 monsters and about 3.2 million fusions. Hubertdradon: Are there any predatory bird monsters? Tom: It depends what you count as a predatory bird monster. I dont think there are any monsters based specifically on predatory birds, but there are definitely a few bird-like monsters you could consider predatory! Zyries: Were there ever any types you guys scrapped because they didnt fit or other reasons? Or any interactions between types you had to scrap? Tom: We locked the types down in late 2019, before we even started working on Cassette Beasts full-time. But there were some type-related ideas for potential monster-collection games we discussed before we finally settled on Cassette Beasts. One was subtypes, where there are several different variants of each type. So for a basic Plant-type, there would be a few subtypes like Fungi, and Wood. All Plant subtypes would have advantages and disadvantages over the same types, but the buffs and debuffs youd get were different. I think this would have been too complicated in Cassette Beasts. And anyway, something with that many types wouldnt leave you with many species of each subtype. Im sure I pitched various other weird types for Cassette Beasts to Jay at some point. In the past I worked on a little procedural generation prototype called Kirigami Beasts, which generates monsters with types like Paper, Rock, Scissors, Glitter, Glue, Tiny and Giant. I like weird types, and I'm glad we found a way to get Glitter, Plastic, and Glass into Cassette Beasts. As for type interactions, theyve been through a lot of iterations. Pretty much all the buffs/debuffs have changed at some point. At one point we planned for Air-type to disperse and remove Glitter-type, but we felt like it would be better to keep the interactions of a rare and unusual type like Glitter consistent. winfrey: Was it hard coming up with all the beasts names? Tom: Most beasts names havent been too hard to come up with! Often it was the case that Jay would draw a design, and Id have 5 pun names for it in about 10 minutes. There were a few weird coincidences where Jay had designed a monster that I assumed was based on a pun name he came up with because the pun was so apparent. The Plant-type lion monster Dandylion is one example. There is no other name that monster could have had, but somehow Jay didnt have any particular name in mind when hed designed it! Jay: Naming things is our greatest talent as a team: making Cassette Beasts was merely an excuse to come up with hundreds of puns. : Any unexpected inspirations or influences along the way? Would love to hear any oddball or surprising media outside of monster taming / creature collecting that helped shape Cassette Beasts! Tom: Great question, theres a lot! If you want the really oddball stuff - Im an occasional lucid dreamer, so I get a lot of my ideas by mining dreams. Thats actually where the idea of copying monster forms to transform into came from: I had a dream about travelling around an island with a friend, where I'd transform into monsters for battle, and learn new forms by observing wild monsters. Jay and I had discussed transformation before that, but up until that point it had always been one fixed monster form per character - youd have to recruit a new human character to be able to use their monster form in battle. Jay, influenced by Kamen Rider, later suggested doing the copying and transforming with physical cassette tapes, and Cassette Beasts was born! Another oddball source of inspiration for me was the story The Beatles Never Broke Up, about a man who in 2009 hit his head and woke up in another world where the Beatles still exist, where people still use analogue technology, and where parallel universe travel is commonplace. I'm sure you can see some similarities with Cassette Beasts here! And of course various aspects of the game have been influenced by more normal things! The presentation of Archangels in Cassette Beasts is inspired a little by Madokas witches. And the way the relationship system ties into fusions is heavily influenced by Steven Universe, which were both fans of. The AP system in Cassette Beasts is taken from board and card games. Both of us had noticed that the constraints on board games pushed their designers to really refine resource management systems. I think that AP is both simpler and more tactical than, for example, standard JRPG MP meters - and it lets us design powerful moves that would be difficult to balance otherwise. Jay: Off the top of my head, an influence on the broader themes of the game (as well as the strange English surrealism of the setting) takes some inspiration from comic author Grant Morrison, whose stories often explore the nature of fiction, multiple realities, and their influence on one another. Prinny: I'm curious if you would add heights in comparison to your player (a human) mainly for fan art/drawing reasons for better scaling Tom: You can see how tall a human is in comparison to monsters at the start of battle! When you enter battle youre in human form for a couple of seconds before you transform. Jay: In our key art we draw monsters slightly smaller than they are compared to humans in-game I think this is more because a 6-foot tall Pombomb wouldnt be as cute as a dog sized one. RetQuetzin: Were there any monster fusions you wanted to handcraft or are they all handled by the procedural system? Tom: I think it would have been a waste to hand-design a subset of fusions. Handcrafted fusions would have taken about as much time to sprite and animate as a large regular monster, so each one of them would reduce the total number of monsters we could have in game. On top of that, out of the 14 thousand procedural fusions, thered only be a slim chance a player would come across one of the handcrafted ones.
Gameplay
Little_JonS: Very, very excited for this game! Just wondered what you had planned for anything post-game? Dnlsokoloff: Is there going to be a post-game, single player arena/battle frontier of some sort where we'll still be able to put our beasties to the test? Jay: Theres post-game content for sure, but it might be a bit different from what you might expect based on other games in this genre. We generally try to design the content that best fits the world of Cassette Beasts. Tom: There is a pretty substantial post-game quest that introduces new monsters, characters and bosses. I estimate that the post-game adds 10-20 hours. That's not even including the randomisation and permadeath options that get unlocked for repeat playthroughs. Akarnor: Will there be new stickers [in the full release of the game that are not in the demo]? Tom: We have a lot of ideas for new moves and status effects that wont make it into the 1.0 full release. If we get the opportunity, wed love to add more after the games release. Ryterex: Are there any plans for post-launch updates? Tom: Cant say at the moment. When we have something to announce youll hear about it. Jay: The kind of support were able to provide will depend on how well the game performs. You know what that means: time to bother your friends and make them follow the game! Shawn B: Will there be any online multiplayer? I know there is couch co-op but I'd like to be able to play with people who aren't right next to me as well. Tom: There wont be any online multiplayer at launch - were developing Cassette Beasts predominantly as a single-player experience. As for after launch, I cant say for sure, but its a possibility if the release goes well. C-Vale: Are there moves/status effects not on the wiki? Tom: Only the unobtainable boss moves. Crackerbones: Will there be an item to increase bootleg odds later in the game? Tom: In the post-game theres a valuable consumable that can be used to find bootlegs of certain species or types. In a previous blog post we mentioned Rogue Fusions: tough fused wild monsters that have a higher than normal bootleg rate. There are several kinds of Rogue Fusions, some of which get unlocked late in the post-game, and the most challenging of them give the best odds for bootlegs. I like that the most efficient way to get bootlegs in Cassette Beasts is to use the battle system. William Syler: Are there mechanics, gameplay considerations, or ideas that youre really excited about / proud of in Cassette Beasts? Tell us more about them! Tom: There are a few that I cant talk about yet! But I can say Im pleased with the battle system. Demo players are already praising its depth, and Im very much looking forward to the reaction to the Ranger Captain boss fights. Each Captain specialises in a particular strategy to show off some of the things you can do in the battle system. In the post-game they hone their strategies further. Its gonna be fun! a_galvantula: How did you come up with the idea for some of the loading screen tips? Tom: Do you mean the loading screen text that says like Directing Traffikrab, Seeing all the Allseer, etc.? We didnt come up with this idea, it was shamelessly stolen from the Sims. Back in the day, the Sims used to display nonsense loading screen text to make loading screens mildly entertaining (Reticulating splines is the famous one). Ive always thought this was a fun idea, and I dont know why more games dont do this. Solidwake: How many open world areas should we expect to be able to freely roam around in? Tom: The island of New Wirral is one large open map, about twice the size of Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. There are some invisible walls you can run into if you exploit physics during the tutorial, but after that the only limits are your knowledge of the battle system and your physics skills! NCrafters: Local co-op in the demo had player two pretty "handcuffed" to player one. Are there any interesting features or mechanics planned for this mode to make the experience a little more flexible? Tom: Having the two characters travel together is kind of the point. If they could go off and do separate things, there wouldnt be many meaningful ways the players could interact. It would end up feeling like two single-player games. There are games that can support independent exploration in local co-op, but the mechanics of turn-based RPGs dont lend themselves to it very well. ShuddersGist: What's the friendship/love mechanic gonna be like? How will it affect the game? Tom: You can get closer to the companions by completing their quests and by battling alongside them. Levelling up your relationship unlocks fusion, as well as a special move called Fusion Power, which does different things depending on which species were fused. And of course the closer you are, the higher the stats of your fusions are! Each time you level up your relationship with a character, you learn a bit more about them via a little cutscene that plays. Theres also a romance option when youve maxed out the relationship meter - but its completely optional and doesnt affect the gameplay. Nanite: Are there any plans for challenge modes? Tom: There are permadeath and randomiser modes unlocked once you beat the story. As for other challenges - were going to wait and see what challenges and rules the community comes up with!
Thats it for today! Missed your chance to ask us something? Not to worry as we'll be doing another Q&A closer to release. Come chat with us on our official Discord! You can always follow us on Twitter, too! Until next time!
Hello folks!
This week we'd love to hear from y'all in the Steam Community. With everyone having fun with the demo, we want to hear your burning Cassette Beast questions!
Pombomb will help deliver them too!
Sadly we won't be able to answer them all, but we'll post the ones we can answer next week. Questions will be taken from all over our communities, so if you'd instead leave one on our Discord or Twitter, that's absolutely fine!
Until next time!
Weve published a patch for the demo today. Version 1.0.7 contains a few fixes and quality of life improvements.
Improvements
- The mailbox is now present in the cafe as well. If you've already completed the demo, you can claim the VALENTINES code here.
Fixes
- Fixes Reodorant lasting 2 minutes instead of 1 as the description claims.
- Fixes a missing voice clip in Clemence's introductory dialogue.
- Fixes the inability to use the left stick to change your controller's slot in the drop in/out UI.
- Fixed a Steam Cloud configuration issue that prevented save files from being backed up.
Other Changes
- The minimap has been moved to the lower-right corner. The reasons for this aren't apparent in the demo, but it will future-proof the UI for the eventual full release of the game.
As always, if you have any thoughts you want to share with us and the community you can join us on the official Discord, as well as follow us on Twitter.
P.S. One last reminder that you can enter the code VALENTINES at the mailbox to receive a special gift!
Please accept our belated Valentine!
You will find it in your mailbox. Enter code "VALENTINES" to receive a special gift. Both your present and your save file will carry over to release!
Hey folks! This time were taking a look at the various human characters you can befriend and battle alongside
Its dangerous to go alone in New Wirral, so Rangers encourage prospective adventurers to travel alongside a partner. In Cassette Beasts there are 6 partner characters to find and unlock. Once unlocked, they will happily travel and battle alongside you whenever you want.
If you need to swap who youre travelling with, just pop back to Harbourtowns Gramophone Cafe, where everybody meets up.
Your partner will follow you around anywhere you go.
During local co-op multiplayer, the second player takes control of the active partner character. In battle, each player has exclusive control over a single character and gets to decide what move they use.
If youre playing alone, youll have control over both characters during battle, of course!
Carniviper and Dominoth? It's a good job Meredith is here to even the odds!
Let's meet some of these partners!
Kayleigh
If you played our Steam Next Fest demo, youll have met Kayleigh. She gives the player their first tape and explains some of the basics of life in New Wirral.
Hailing from Ireland, Kayleigh is a kind and friendly ranger who wants the best for her friends and community. Her preferred monster form is the Air-type monster Sirenade.
Meredith
Meredith is a sarcastic and antisocial Londoner who occupies herself repairing Harbourtowns electronics. She likes dumb action movies and bands with tragic backstories.
Eugene
Eugene, the self-proclaimed Protector of Harbourtown, also appeared in our Steam Next Fest Demo. When and where hes from isnt clear, other than his quest is to rid New Wirral of the undead but something doesnt quite seem right. Why are these vampires wearing suits?
As for the other partner characters, youll have to wait and see!
When you have a rest at a campsite (or in the cafe) your friend will usually have something to say. Every once in a while this triggers a social event that will progress your relationship with them to the next level. These social events increase the strength and abilities of your fusions by increasing the strength of your bond.
Choosing certain dialogue options can also lead to something more than friendship
Thats it for today! Who is your favourite partner shown so far? Who will you romance? Come tell us on our official Discord! You can always follow us on Twitter, too!
Until next time!
I dont know how best to break the news. Youre stuck here. We all are.
Bytten Studio & Raw Fury are back with our Cassette Beasts demo for you to play!
Washing up on the beach of New Wirral you meet Kayleigh who rescues you from a monster attack and becomes your guide in this new world. From there you may explore Harbourtown and its surroundings. Fight, record & level up as you and Kayleigh explore some strange events surrounding the town.
Want to know more about the monsters that you'll face, or just want to browse who you can meet in the demo? Check out our Cassette Beasts Official Wiki!
The demo also features local Co-op. First, complete the initial tutorial of monster transformation and unlock your partner:
Then simply connect two controllers and hit RB+LB or START to assign players:
Changelog
If you played our demo last time in Steam Next Fest last year, here's some tweaks and changes made since then:
- Improved UI flow for setting up local co-op multiplayer
- Bootleg monsters in the overworld have a glitchy TV static effect to make them easier to notice
- The mouse cursor now automatically hides itself after a few seconds of inactivity if you are mainly using a controller
- The controls are now displayed on the screen for a while when you start a new file
- When selecting a sticker from the inventory to apply to a tape, stickers incompatible with the tape are shown greyed out at the end of the list
- The minimap has been made larger
- Momentum is now preserved when landing after a short hop
- Fewer items are now lost upon defeat
- Many bug fixes and performance improvements have been made
Oh! It's Valentine's day tomorrow - and Pombomb has brought us a love letter! We'll have to find out what it contains tomorrow, I think!
Join Fiona and Raw Fury cozy game extraordinaire Matt on Wednesday as we play Cassette Beasts together!
Join for
Good Vibes
Looking for Bootlegs
Making BFFs
Achangls...
https://twitch.tv/rawfurygames Feb 8th @ 12PM EST/6PM CET
Cassette Beasts is now verified on Steam Deck!
That's right; we're so excited to announce that you'll be able to play Cassette Beasts on your Steam deck on release. Explore, battle and make friends whilst on the move! Oh, and of course, keep an eye out for those elusive bootlegs!
Hey folks! Have you ever wondered what the Rangers of Harbourtown do? Well, its time for us to go into more detail
If you played our Steam Next Fest demo, youll already know the basics. At the beginning of Cassette Beasts, you wash up on the shore of New Wirral, an island on what seems to be another world. There you meet Kayleigh, a kind and friendly ranger, who takes you to Harbourtown and shows you the ropes.
Along the way, you and Kayleigh encounter a strange and otherworldly creature known to the residents of New Wirral only as an Archangel.
Finding more of these Archangels is the key to finding the way off New Wirral and back to your home world. But to survive them youll need to get stronger--and thats where the Rangers come in
Rangers
Harbourtowns Rangers exist to support the community. They maintain the town, manage supply lines and deliveries, and keep important routes safe for travel. Occasionally, more dangerous situations pop up, and these fall on the Ranger Captains--the highest ranking rangers--to resolve. The Captains are also responsible for training new recruits, and in your case that means battling! Each of the 12 Captains has tapes based around a particular strategy they favour in battle. If youre not prepared with a strategy of your own it can be a difficult fight.
Stationed in New Wirral Park, Captain Wallace is most likely the first Captain youll face. We first showed him on our stream in December. His preferred strategy uses walls to block incoming attacks, so consider setting up your tapes with moves that will let you take them down quickly, otherwise youll get nowhere!
Ranger Wilma is an essential part of the Rangers organisation. Certain scarce items and upgrades--invaluable in the pursuit of Archangels--are stored and distributed by Wilma from the Rangers HQ in Harbourtown. The more your training under the Captains progresses, the more shell be able to provide you with.
Postgame
While I wont spoil how the story ends, I will say there is a lot more to do in Cassette Beasts after it! People dont stop arriving on New Wirral after your appearance, of course. Just as you received help from the Rangers early on, after youve completed your training and become a Ranger, youll be helping orient some of the new arrivals yourself!
If youve seen these bad boys in screenshots and videos before and wondered what they are, theyre what the Rangers call Rogue Fusions. Rogue Fusions are unnaturally strong monsters that have fused in the wild. Some Rogue Fusions surround themselves with a swarm of other monsters, and others seem to increase in power in other ways As a Ranger and a recognised combat pro itll be your job to keep them under control. But why do they form, and why are they becoming more frequent and dangerous? In the postgame, there are new monsters to encounter and record, and new bosses to fight. Each Ranger Captain can be rematched. This time they wont hold back, and will unleash their perfected strategies on you! And of course if thats not enough for you, beating the game unlocks additional game modes, including permadeath, and various kinds of randomisation.
Thats all for now. Let us know what you think in our Discord! And of course you can also find us on Twitter. Until next time!
Welcome to Cassette Beasts - Roundup #2
Tom and Jay here again to welcome to our second roundup blog! Let's say hello to some new monsters and get a little more familiar with the systems in Cassette Beasts!
First, let's look at the element system in Cassette Beasts. How does it work? What is the Chemistry System? And how does fusion play into it? Let's find out!
Elements
Every monster in Cassette Beasts has an elemental type. These represent the monster's nature and can be seen next to the health bar on the battle screen. What are the elements in Cassette Beasts, then? let's take a look at the list!
Beast
Fire
Ice
Lightning
Plant
Air
Water
Earth
Poison
Metal
Plastic
Astral
Glass
Glitter So we've looked at the elemental types - but what does it all mean?
Chemistry
So how do these elements interact with each other? Well, the chemistry system allows these elements to create reactions that can be positive, negative or neutral! Here is an example of the air-type Cluckabilly attacking the fire-type Velocirifile.
If hit with an air-type attack from Cluckabilly then Velocirifle will be Extinguished, a reaction that lowers its melee and ranged attack power. The attack won't do extra damage, but it will negatively affect Velocirifle's ability to deal damage! What about the reverse, then?
This reaction is Updraft, causing Cluckabilly to receive an Air Wall status, which absorbs up to 3 incoming hits. Pretty useful, huh? You can utilise many reactions in battle to give yourself the edge.
Cluckabilly #100
Cluckabillies are defined by their antisocial attitudes. The force of their angry caws can be strong enough to create shockwaves. Whilst they may look unthreatening in their adolescent forms, it is said that they are capable of growing into something much more dangerous. They are well-rounded in battle, but their razor sharp blade tails give them a slight edge as melee fighters.
Velocirifle #042
The base of its skull has chambers full of gunpowder that it can use to cause explosions. It can fire objects out of its face this way, as well as quick blasts of fire and flame! Whilst weak in melee combat, it excels as a ranged attacker.
Fusion
So how does fusion work with this element system? Well, a monster's fusion form inherits both elements from the two monsters that combine to form it!
How terrifying! So when Mascotbilly attacks an enemy with a move that doesn't have an elemental type of its own, it'll use both elements that Mascotbilly has. Against Velocirifle it triggers both the Smoke reaction (which increases the target's evasion) on account of the plastic-type, but also the Extinguished reaction we explained earlier.
So whilst Velocirifle took multiple debuffs, it also gained one buff from the attack. Interesting, huh? Some fusions must create some very interesting reactions...
Mascotoy
Mascotoy proves that plastic-type beasts arent all fun and games. Once some sort of character costume, the Mascotoy is now closer to a shambling corpse. Whilst its slow, you wouldnt want to be on the pointy end of its oversized claw. Perhaps if one were to record it, however, this unnerving entity would make for a formidable form to take in battle.
Bootlegs
Ocassionally, in Cassette Beasts, you'll stumble upon an odd-coloured monster in the world.
Hey wait, is that Squirey... green? This Squirey here is usually beast-type, yet it's appeared here with the wrong colour and element! This is a "bootleg" - signified by its name in red above its health bar. This is different from a monster using a coating move to change its element, which can be done in battle as a temporary element swapping. Any monster has a small chance to appear with any element as bootleg.
The colour even matches its new element! Bootleg monsters don't just have different elements - they also have a new move pool to match. This means a monster may have access to a whole selection of moves they wouldn't normally have. On top of this, bootleg tapes have a slightly higher chance to learn moves with uncommon or rare bonus traits.
Squirey cannot usually learn Woodcutter, but this plant-type bootleg tape form can!
Next Time
Thank you for taking the time to read our quick roundup of some of the features and systems in Cassette Beasts. To see more in detail, you can view the individual posts below. If you want to ask any questions, feel free to visit the official Discord and follow us on Twitter!
- Cassette Beasts Blog #5 - Monster Showcase
- Cassette Beasts Blog #6 - Elements, Chemistry & Fusion
- Cassette Beasts Blog #7 - Bootleg
- Blog #4: Show your Moves!
Hey folks! Its time to introduce some of the monsters of Cassette Beasts - including some youve seen before and some you might not have! Here we go
Bansheep #019
Element: Beast French: Fantmouton Italian: Stregovina German: Geisterschaf Spanish: Beenshee One of the two starting monsters you can choose from in Cassette Beasts, you may have already seen Bansheep if you played our Steam Next Fest demo back in October! The eerie moans of the wild Bansheep at night have led many to believe that they are restless undead spirits, but this is untrue: they are very much alive, they just like to have a bit of a whine. Who doesnt?
Candevil #014
Element: Beast French: Gourmandiable Italian: Zuccherello German: Bonbonteufel Spanish: Diablamelo Candevils possess the peculiar ability to generate sugary sweets from their bodies, which can be used as gifts or as ballistic projectiles. Some find this quite charming, whereas others argue that its actually very weird and gross. Candevil is the other starting monster. While Candevil and Bansheep both start with the Beast element, each of them can be remastered along two different branches, into more evolved forms that have very different elemental types.
Nevermort #047
Element: Poison French: Corbomort Italian: Maimort German: Nimmertod Spanish: Nuncamrvido It must be noted that the Nevermort does not have a beak rather, it is wearing what appears to be a porcelain plague doctor mask. What face lies beneath the mask is something better left undiscovered.
Salamagus #059
Element: Fire French: Salamage Italian: Salamagus German: Salamagus Spanish: Salamago The slippery Salamagus is a student of pyromancy and other arcane arts. It is able to breathe fire using fuel it stores in the pouches on its head incidentally, these look like giant googly eyes to the untrained eye.
Squirey #034
Element: Beast French: curikiki Italian: Scudierrante German: Drahtknappe Spanish: Escuderazado The common Squirey is often seen roaming the plains of New Wirral, searching for opponents to battle. Despite their cute appearances, they are dedicated warriors and driven by an innate desire for self-improvement.
Palangolin #036
Element: Metal French: Palangolin Italian: Lanciolino German: Palangolin Spanish: Palangoln The Palangolin is the mature form of a Squirey who has remained true to their principles, and has become a knight of great virtue. Palangolins wield striking golden halberds, which they use to defend their allies in the heat of battle.
Manispear #035
Element: Metal French: Chevalance Italian: Malabardo German: Manispeer Spanish: Manistratega Hey, wait This ones new, right? If a Squirey gives in to their dark impulses whilst training, it is destined to become a Manispear. Hiding its face beneath a black helmet, the Manispear fights without restraint or self-control.
Wondering what a fusion of Manispear and Palangolin looks like? Well, together they form Manisgolin!
What is your favourite monster shown today? Come and let us know on our official Discord! You can always follow us on Twitter, too! Until next time!
Happy new year, folks! This week were looking at some of the features you can make use of in Cassette Beasts to spice up your playthroughs.
Custom Game Modes
Once youve beaten the game, Cassette Beasts has a number of options you can use to customise your next playthrough. While we recommend playing the game through normally on your first playthrough, these options can also be unlocked with a cheat code--handy if youre playing the game on a different machine at a speedrun competition! The cheat code will be shared after the games release.
Lets go through these one by one: First up, we have "Tapes Break Permanently," which means that any tape with 0 hit points cant be repaired and will be unusable for the rest of your playthrough! But don't worry, as long as you have at least one usable tape in storage, you'll be able to keep going after defeat. If you want to up the stakes even more, turn on "Defeat is Game Over," where a single loss in battle means game over no matter how many tapes you have left. In Cassette Beasts, your party members take overspill damage when a tape breaks, so one big hit from an enemy could be enough to completely end your run! Feeling adventurous? "Randomise Monsters" lets you mix up the habitats of monsters, as well as the starter and partner tapes. This is a great way to try out monsters you wouldn't normally use in your party. With "Randomise Types," my personal favourite, you can randomise monster species' types, as well as their colour palettes and movepools to match. This isnt the same as making everything a bootleg--each species will always be a particular type, just not the one you're used to!
If you want to mix up your opponents strategies, "Randomise Moves" is for you. This option can be used to randomise the default set of moves for monsters, as well as the moves you unlock by upgrading tapes. These moves are still compatible with the monster species, but the combinations can be surprising--a normally weak monster could become something to dread! Finally, there's the "Random Seed" option, which can be used to control all the aforementioned randomisation options. It can also control the randomisation of certain variables in the game, even when no customisations are enabled perfect for speedruns. With this option, sticker merchants will always have the same stock on the same day, and chests will always contain the same items. These options are our answer to the Nuzlocke and permadeath features the community has been asking for. While there arent currently any options that enforce the first Nuzlocke rule (only one monster can be recorded per route), well be keeping an eye on how players choose to interpret that rule in Cassette Beasts open world.
Speedrunning & LiveSplit Integration
A small but dedicated speedrunning community grew around our last game, Lennas Inception, after its launch. We learned a lot from this community about what makes a game suitable for speedrunning and what does not, and factored this into Cassette Beasts. On all platforms, you can enable an in-game timer in the settings menu at any time. This timer displays in the top left of the screen, and records how long youve been playing your save file for. It automatically pauses on loading screens and during character customisation. While the in-game timer is enabled, you can hold the middle mouse button (or Y on a controller) to speed up dialogue, and automatically select dialogue options. If you have LiveSplit installed (available for Windows only), you can connect Cassette Beasts to the LiveSplit Server component, and automatically send split commands based on certain in-game events. The game tracks numerous stats in your save file, for the purpose of achievements. These stats include which bosses youve defeated, how many species youve recorded, and so on. Any of these stats can be used to trigger splits. The LiveSplit integration is fully configurable through an INI file, so you can create your own list of custom splits!
Example INI file on the left, and Tom's best time achieved with it on the right. Spoilery details are censored. Jay and Tom had tons of fun competing for the best time. Note that the time shown isnt representative of the length of a normal playthrough--this one was achieved with a lot of dirty tricks! The configuration file makes it very flexible. Youre not locked to beating certain bosses in a certain order, or even starting and ending your run at the usual places. If you want the timer to start when you beat the first boss, split after youve recorded 3 Traffikrabs, and then finish when you defeat a certain NPC, you can! We hope that this will make speedrunning Cassette Beasts fun and easy for people to get into. More information about how to configure the LiveSplit integration will be published on the wiki after the game releases.
That's all for this week, folks! If you want to know more, why not swing by the official Discord! As well as that, you can always follow us on Twitter for future updates! Until next time!
Say hello to Fountess!
Created by Jenna Brown (Art Director for A Hat In Time!), and look how adorable they are! I can't wait to meet them in-game!
Well, folks, it's time to take a moment to rest and recharge (or hey, if you're low on batteries, you can always twirl the tape back with a pencil!). Thank you all for your support this last year! We'll see you all in the new year with more exciting reveals into Cassette Beasts. Also, more Pombomb because, of course...! So from all of us at Raw Fury and Bytten Studio-"arf! arf!" oh, and Pombomb too. Have a great holiday and a Happy New Year!
This week, we're taking a look at "Bootlegs" in Cassette Beasts. What's all this about? Let's take a look!
Ocassionally, in Cassette Beasts, you'll stumble upon an odd-coloured monster in the world.
Hey wait, is that Squirey... green?
This Squirey here is usually beast-type, yet it's appeared here with the wrong colour and element! This is a "bootleg" - signified by its name in red above its health bar. This is different from a monster using a coating move to change its element, which can be done in battle as a temporary element swapping.
Any monster has a small chance to appear with any element as bootleg.
The colour even matches its new element!
Bootleg monsters don't just have different elements - they also have a new move pool to match. This means a monster may have access to a whole selection of moves they wouldn't normally have. On top of this, bootleg tapes have a slightly higher chance to learn moves with uncommon or rare bonus traits.
Squirey cannot usually learn Woodcutter, but this plant-type bootleg tape form can!
This sure leaves a lot of things to collect, huh? Tell us what bootleg monster tapes you'd like to collect! If you want to ask any questions, feel free to visit the official Discord and follow us on Twitter!
This week, we're taking a look at the element system in Cassette Beasts. How does it work? What is the Chemistry System? And how does fusion play into it? Let's find out!
Elements
Every monster in Cassette Beasts has an elemental type. These represent the nature of the monster, and can be seen next to the health bar on the battle screen.
Yep, those square icons right there! What are the elements in Cassette Beasts, then? let's take a look at the list!
Beast
Beast-type monsters don't have any particular elemental traits. Beast-type monsters include Bansheep, Candevil and Springheel.
Fire
Fire-type monsters are creatures associated with fire, gunpowder, and explosives. Fire-type monsters include Pombomb and Salamagus.
Ice
Ice-type monsters are associated with snow, winter, frost and mist. Ice-type monsters include Spooki-onna and Grampus.
Lightning
Lightning-type monsters have traits related to electricity, circuitry, and thunder. Lightning-type monsters include Cat-5.
Plant
Plant-type monsters are those with bodies made of plant matter, wood and flowers. Examples include Kirikuri and Dandylion.
Air
Air-type monsters are often connected to wind, flight and sound. Air-type monsters include Sirenade, Dominoth and Cluckabilly.
Water
Water-type monsters are associated with the ocean, lakes and rivers. Examples of water-type monsters include Undyin.
Earth
Earth-type monsters typically have bodies made of stone, sand, clay or earth. Earth-type monsters include Pawndead.
Poison
Poison-type monsters are connected to toxins, pollution, venom and other such nasty substances. Examples of poison-type monsters include Masquerattle and Nevermort.
Metal
Metal-type monsters are often wearing metal armour, or have bodies partially made of metals. Examples of metal-type monsters include Allseer, Southpaw and Palangolin.
Plastic
Plastic-type monsters? How did that happen?! I guess humans have spread plastic enough that monsters have now become associated with it too. These monsters often have bodies made of plastic, or similar artificial petrochemical substances. Examples of plastic-type monsters include Traffikrab and Mascotoy.
Astral
Astral-type monsters are associated with space, the arcane arts or the cosmic unknown. Examples of astral-type monsters include Stardigrade.
Glass
Glass-type monsters have bodies made entirely of pure glass. Examples of glass-type monsters include [REDACTED]
Glitter
Glitter is unique in that there are no glitter-type monsters. However, the move Glitter Bomb can transfer this elemental type to a target, who then is able to pass that type on by contact. To make it simple: glitter gets everywhere and is annoying. So we've looked at the elemental types - but what does it all mean?
Chemistry
So how do these elements interact with each other? Well, the chemistry system allows these elements to create reactions that can be positive, negative or neutral! Here is an example of the air-type Cluckabilly attacking the fire-type Velocirifile.
If hit with an air-type attack from Cluckabilly then Velocirifle will be Extinguished, a reaction that lowers its melee and ranged attack power. The attack won't do extra damage, but it will negatively affect Velocirifle's ability to deal damage! What about the reverse, then?
This reaction is Updraft, causing Cluckabilly to receive an Air Wall status, which absorbs up to 3 incoming hits. Pretty useful, huh? There's many reactions that you can utilise in battle to give yourself the edge.
Fusion
So how does fusion work with this element system? Well, a monster's fusion form inherits both elements from the two monsters that combine to form it! In last week's blog we looked at Mascotoy and Cluckabilly - so why not find out what their fusion looks like?
How terrifying! So when Mascotbilly attacks an enemy with a move that doesn't have an elemental type of its own, it'll use both elements that Mascotbilly has. Against Velocirifle it triggers both the Smoke reaction (which increases the target's evasion) on account of the plastic-type, but also the Extinguished reaction we explained earlier.
So whilst Velocirifle took multiple debuffs, it also gained one buff from the attack. Interesting, huh? Some fusions must create some very interesting reactions...
That's all for this week, folks! If you want to know more, why not swing by the official Discord! As well as that, you can always follow us on Twitter for future updates! Until next time!
This week, we wanted to do a deep dive into some of the monsters of Cassette Beasts - including ones you've seen before, and ones you might not have! Let's get started, shall we?
Springheel #001
Element: Beast French: Ressortalon Italian: Saltatore German: Sprungfeder Spanish: Botajack The impish Springheel is a sight you will no doubt have seen if you played our Steam Next Fest demo! This annoying creature hides behind walls and trees where it is not easily spotted, only to leap out and attack those unlucky enough to pass by. In this form, however, the element of surprise belongs to you!
Tokusect #033
Element: Air French: Tokusecte Italian: Tokusetto German: Tokusekt Spanish: Tokusecto Tokusects have extremely aerodynamic bodies, aiding a fighting style that is focused around using their pointed legs to strike opponents and channel powerful currents of air. In this form, your swift kicks can strike foes several times in the time it takes a moth to beat its wings.
Southpaw #040
Element: Metal French: Loupunch Italian: Lupomenaro German: Linksausleger Spanish: Lupdirecto The mature form of the Puppercut, the Southpaw is covered in a light, flexible metal alloy that protects it without slowing it down. This wolf is a fast melee attacker - in this form, your strengths in battle will be your ability to hit fast and hit first.
Velocirifle #042
Element: Fire French: Fusiraptor Italian: Fuciliraptor German: Velociflinte Spanish: Velocirrifle The base of its skull has chambers full of gunpowder that it can use to cause explosions. It can fire objects out of its face this way, as well as quick blasts of fire and flame! Whilst weak in melee combat, it excels as a ranged attacker.
Grampus #066
Element: Ice French: Grampus Italian: Adirampus German: Grantpus Spanish: Krampun The fully matured form of Elfless. Having spent many years suppressing its emotions, the Grampus is a hulking brute with a desire to impart its own misery onto others, particularly during festive seasons. In this form, your melee strength will be very formidable!
Mascotoy
Element: Plastic French: Mascotrpas Italian: Mascolocco German: Maskottier Spanish: Mascuguete Mascotoy proves that plastic-type beasts arent all fun and games. Once some sort of character costume, the Mascotoy is now closer to a shambling corpse. Whilst its slow, you wouldnt want to be on the pointy end of its oversized claw. Perhaps if one were to record it, however, this unnerving entity would make for a formidable form to take in battle.
Cluckabilly #100
Element: Air French: Cocorirock Italian: Chicchirock German: Gackerbilly Spanish: Cocabilly Oh - this is new! Cluckabillies are defined by their antisocial attitudes. The force of their angry caws can be strong enough to create shockwaves. Whilst they may look unthreatening in their adolescent forms, it is said that they are capable of growing into something much more dangerous. They are well-rounded in battle, but their razor sharp blade tails give them a slight edge as melee fighters.
Last blog we teased a fusion between Domimoth and Nevermort.
What does that look like, exactly? Well, they form Domimort!
Is it a bug or a bird? Is that what you expected? Next time we'll show off a fusion of two of the monsters shown off here today. Which two? You'll just have to find out! What is your favourite monster shown off today? Come and let us know on our official Discord! You can always follow us on Twitter, too! Until next time!
"If you wish to leave this land, then heed my words..."
We hope you're excited to see more Cassette Beasts action as we're here today to bring you the NEWEST gameplay trailer features on The Mix 2022 showcase! [previewyoutube=pydbU0FovBw;full][/previewyoutube] Cassette Beasts puts a unique spin on monster-collectors, turn-based battles, and open-world RPG adventure. This new trailer highlights the games starting monster choices and what evolutions, in this case, remasters, your starters can become!
Collect awesome monsters to use during turn-based battles combine any two monster forms using Cassette Beasts Fusion System to create unique and powerful new ones! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1321440
"What's that Pombomb? Another letter? Oh! It's information on how you can stay up to-date on Cassette Beasts. Thank you Pombomb, you sure do think of everything!" Sign up: https://www.cassettebeasts.com/mailing-list/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ByttenStudio Discord: https://discord.com/invite/HUWjFX3 Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@byttenstudio Web: https://www.cassettebeasts.com/ Check out the wiki: https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/wiki/Main_Page
Hey folks! Were really pleased with the reception the Cassette Beasts demo has had. Thank you all so much for sharing your feedback, wishlisting, and telling your friends about the game! Weve published a patch for the demo today. Version 1.0.1 adds a couple of frequently-requested features, and fixes a few issues that have popped up.
Improvements
- You can now sprint by pressing B (on a controller) or Shift (on a keyboard). (Note that there is already a much faster dash ability that can be unlocked in the full game.)
- You can now purchase tapes from Clmence before the end of the demo.
Fixes
- Fixed Sirenade not appearing as seen in the bestiary until Kayleigh has been unlocked as a partner.
- Fixed a UI layout issue in the party menu on ultrawide resolutions.
- Fixed the chance to use a random move sticker attribute trying to use passive stickers.
- Fixed a bug that allowed the record and transform orders to be cancelled during the recording tutorial.
- Fixed large cracked rocks sometimes catapulting the player into the air when broken.
- Fixed a couple of ways the player could get trapped in a drowning loop: at the cracked path, and on the lamp buoy at the entrance to Harbourtown.
- Fixed a rare bug that could cause cutscenes to occur when theyre not meant to, causing glitched dialogue and invisible NPCs.
- Fixed the game locking up if you exit the credits while returning from the licences screen.
- Removed an unnecessary message dialog that slowed down battles a tiny bit when you use Call For Help.
- Various localisation improvements.
As always, if you have any thoughts you want to share with us and the community you can join us on the official Discord, as well as follow us on Twitter. P.S. One last reminder that you can enter the code TRAFFIKRAB at the mailbox to receive a special gift!
Welcome to Cassette Beasts - Roundup #1
Hey folks, Tom and Jay here -- we're the duo behind Cassette Beasts! Cassette Beasts is our "dream game", an open-world monster-fusing RPG! "I don't know how best to break the news. You're stuck here. We all are." The player begins the game having washed ashore on the beaches of New Wirral, and you soon learn of the predicament you are in. New Wirral holds many environments, dangers and secrets. On your quest to find your way back home, you'll explore the island at your own pace.
Harbourtown
Harbourtown is the home for all residents of the island, and is a place you'll be returning to often. Built as a community that accepts everyone, Harbourtown is a place you can:
- Heal up without having to use wood for a campfire
- Swap out your adventuring partner for another
- Catch up on the latest town gossip
- Exchange resources for new moves to use in battle
- And more!
Transformation
If you've been following so far, you'll know that in the world of New Wirral, the residents transform using cassette players. Each cassette tape contains the essence of one monster form, that its listener can transform into to battle. But how does one obtain new monster forms?
Recording
The built-in microphone on the cassette players can be used to record the essence of a wild monster. This isn't straightforward and it comes with its own risks. In order to record a monster, you must return to human form - which means you are vulnerable to attack. A successful recording will net you a new tape, and a new bestiary entry for your collection if you've not obtained this monster form before!
Stickers
You and your partner are able to act in battle using stickers - a list of actions that you can trigger on your turn. Each monster has a certain number of slots available to assign stickers, and monster forms are limited in which stickers they are able to use. All of these stickers can be assigned and removed from a monster tape without any cost, so you are free to experiment to find the best loadouts for your monster forms! There's one more cool thing to mention when talking about stickers - you can get uncommon and rare variants!
Fusion
When you and your partner fuse in battle, you combine into a powerful and unique Fusion form!
How does this affect your move list, then? Well, you get both move pools at once.
Not only does it mean you can use any of the active moves assigned to either monster used to create your fusion form, but your passive moves will all still be able to trigger. You can have very interesting and versatile fusion forms as a result of this! There are also unique "Fusion Power" moves that you can obtain when fused!
Next Time
Thank you for taking the time to read our quick roundup of some of the features and systems in Cassette Beasts. To see more in detail, you can view the individual posts below. If you want to ask any questions, feel free to visit the official Discord and follow us on Twitter!
- Blog #1: Hello, and welcome!
- Blog #2: Home Sweet Home...?
- Blog #3: Roll the Tape!
- Blog #4: Show your Moves!
"This might get a little weird, but follow my lead!"
Hey, folks! Earlier this summer we managed to bring a demo of Cassette Beasts to multiple worldwide events. The reception to it (both from press and the public!) was so positive that we've been working towards bringing that demo to a wider audience. We're super excited to finally be able to bring it to Steam Next Fest, so you too can play it!
So, what do we have in store?
Demo Tape
You too can now play a limited-time demo of Cassette Beasts! You can find it on our Steam store page, and it will be available from October 3rd - 10th. Our demo lets you play through the opening of the game. You'll get to explore Harbourtown, meet some new friends and learn the ropes when it comes to transforming and battling. Your progress will be saved, so you'll be able to continue any save files you create in the demo in the full game when it releases in 2023! What's more, we've been able to bring you the demo in the following languages:
- English
- French
- Italian
- German
- Spanish - Spain
- Spanish - Latin America
- Japanese
- Korean
- Simplified Chinese
I want to know more!
The demo is the first peek into the world of New Wirral, but there's plenty more to learn about the game! If you want to know more, you should read our Steam blog posts:
- Blog #1: Hello, and welcome!
- Blog #2: Home Sweet Home...?
- Blog #3: Roll the Tape!
- Blog #4: Show your Moves!
Wiki
Oh, hello there, Pombomb! What's that in your mouth, a letter for us? Hmm, let's see... Oh wow, this is amazing; thank you for letting me know! Who's a good boy; you are Pombomb! Looks like he wanted to tell us about the new official Cassette Beasts Wiki!
We've also been working on bringing this to you, just in time for the public demo! It's live right now, please take a look around. It'll be continuously updated so feel free to check back often for new updates and information.
We won't keep you waiting any longer, enjoy the game! If you want to talk about Cassette Beasts with the team and community, you should join our official Discord! Not to mention, we have a Twitter account where we share new information and snippets of the game. Until next time! --- Oh, you read this far? Congratulations, you! Here's a secret - you can obtain an extra special Traffikrab tape in the demo - all you have to do is give the phrase TRAFFIKRAB to the mailman. Don't worry, you'll figure it out!
Welcome back! Today we're going to look at combat and moves in Cassette Beasts - since battling monsters as monsters is at the core of the gameplay, we thought it'd be a good idea to dive into how it works!
Stickers
You and your partner are able to act in battle using stickers - a list of actions that you can trigger on your turn. Each monster has a certain number of slots available to assign stickers, and monster forms are limited in which stickers they are able to use. Let's take a look!
A look at Bansheep's default full sticker set. You'll notice that most moves here have a set of orange squares next to them: these represent the number of Action Points, or AP, it costs to use them. A party member gains 2 AP per turn, so you have some choices to make - do you spend your AP on a low cost move such as "Sharpen" this turn, or perhaps use a no-cost move like "Smack" in order to use a stronger move next turn? You'll be making choices like this a lot as you fight: it's time to think strategically! You'll also notice that one of the moves here does not have a cost, and instead is listed as "passive". Some stickers have their own trigger conditions in battle, such as losing a certain amount of HP. All of these stickers can be assigned and removed from a monster tape without any cost, so you are free to experiment to find the best loadouts for your monster forms!
Fusion
Wait, didn't we say last time we'd show what these two looked when fused?
Oh yeah, we did! When you and your partner fuse in battle, you combine into a powerful and unique Fusion form!
Banlope! Like, Bansheep + Thwackalope! That makes sense. How does this affect your move list, then? Well, you get both move pools at once.
That's a lot of moves! Not only does it mean you can use any of the active moves assigned to either monster used to create your fusion form, but your passive moves will all still be able to trigger. You can have very interesting and versatile fusion forms as a result of this! There are also unique "Fusion Power" moves that you can obtain when fused, but we can talk about that another time!
There's one more cool thing to mention when talking about stickers - you can get uncommon and rare variants. Let's have a look at this move set for Palangolin:
Palangolin can use Toxic Stab AND Battery? That's pretty versatile. Do you see how "Sharp Edges" is displayed with green text? That means it is uncommon, and has a bonus effect that is listed on the move description. In this case, it heals 7% of the owner's HP when activated. There are lots of different bonus effects, and they differ depending on the kind of move and its rarity. You might find yourself coming across some extra useful versions of commonly-found move stickers! This status page also displays the stat balance of the monster form. Palangolin is better at melee combat, which is no surprise.
Next Time
Wow, there sure are a lot of moves with many different elemental types. I wonder how they all work? I guess we'll find out next time! If you want to ask any questions, feel free to visit the official Discord and follow us on Twitter!
What would these two look like when fused? Find out next time!
This week, we're going to take a look at the ins and outs of monster transformation. Cassette tapes? Recording? What does it all mean?
Transformation
If you've been following so far, you'll know that in the world of New Wirral, the residents transform using cassette players. Each cassette tape contains the essence of one monster form, that its listener can transform into to battle.
Transforming into a monster is the best way to fight back against the hostile monsters that roam this strange island! But how does one obtain new monster forms?
Recording
The built-in microphone on the cassette players can be used to record the essence of a wild monster. This isn't straightforward and it comes with its own risks. In order to record a monster, you must return to human form - which means you are vulnerable to attack. When you select the "Record" option in battle, you are given the option to choose a blank tape, and also the wild monster you wish to target. For the next turn of combat, the party member who is recording will return to human form, establishing a recording connection with the target.
Let's try and record a copy of this monster! Wait... is this piracy? A percentage meter will appear above the heads of the target - this displays the chance of a successful recording. This likelihood can be raised or lowered before the turn ends, and is influenced by several things:
- The quality of the blank tape
- How much HP they had when recording begins
- How much damage is done to the target in rest of the turn
- How much damage is done to the recorder in the rest of the turn
It may may look cute, but the Thwackalope's big makeshift club gives it access to some strong attacks. That's the gist of it! Whilst most monster forms can be obtained from wild monsters, there are some that you might have to add to your collection through other means.
Gamescom
Did you catch our announcement? We're bringing a demo of Cassette Beasts to Gamescom 2022! If you happen to be attending, you can find us by visiting the Raw Fury area [over in HALL 9.1 Aisle B No: 049] to find our booth! For those eager to play the demo but aren't able to attend Gamescom, we are looking into the best way we might make this demo public. We appreciate your patience!
Next Time
For our next blog post, we'll look at the battle system with more depth, as well as how fusion works. Which begs the question - what does a fusion of Thwackalope and Bansheep look like?
As always, you can come chat to us on the official Discord and follow us on Twitter! Until next time!
We are happy to announce that we are world premiering a the first Cassette Beasts public demo at Bitsummit X-Roads and Gamescom 2022!
The demo features the prologue of Cassette Beasts and will let you experience the opening to the game, meet the inhabitants of Harbourtown, and battle and record a bunch of beasts!
Be one of the first to try out this new demo at two events this August:
Bitsummit X-Roads in Kyoto, Japan - August 6th-7th
Gamescom 2022 in Cologne, Germany - August 24th-28th
At both events, you'll be able to:
- Play the demo, available to the public for the first time!
- Pick up some exclusive Cassette Beasts goodies!
- Chat to the us, the developers, who are attending both events!
We foresee no Lobstacle to having a lot of fun at these events! We will have demo stations featuring the game and the opportunity for you to ask questions and let us know what you think! This is going to be a really exciting journey for us - we hope to see you there! To find us at Bitsummit: https://bitsummit.org/en/ To find us at Gamescom: https://www.gamescom.global/en Look for Cassette Beasts or Raw Fury on the maps!
For more news and updates, follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and join our official Discord! Don't forget to Wishlist the game here on Steam; it helps us a lot!
We're back from summer hiatus (and sunny weather) to take another dive into Cassette Beasts! In today's blog post, we wanted to take a look at the world of the game.
New Wirral
The game is set on the island of New Wirral, a mysterious land inhabited by, as you might have guessed, beasts. The player begins the game having washed ashore on the beaches of New Wirral, and you soon learn of the predicament you are in. New Wirral holds many environments, dangers and secrets. On your quest to find your way back home, you'll explore the island at your own pace.
It must be said that there is nothing unique about your arrival - the other residents of the island also found their way there in the same way.
When the first people to find themselves on New Wirral arrived, they eventually founded a town - a town that stands to this very day! Which is...
Harbourtown
Harbourtown is the home for all residents of the island, and is a place you'll be returning to often. Built as a community that accepts everyone, Harbourtown is a place you can:
- Heal up without having to use wood for a campfire
- Swap out your adventuring partner for another
- Catch up on the latest town gossip
- Exchange resources for new moves to use in battle
- And more!
Rumours
In regards to gossip, the townsfolk will often have rumours to impart to you. These can tip you off about new monster locations, quests and other information that will help you explore the island!
Town Hall
The Town Hall is the HQ of the rangers, who help keep the island safe. Here you can unlock certain unique upgrades for your cassette player that help you in battle.
The residents of Harbourtown may be strangers at first, but the more you get to know them, the more you'll learn about this strange world you've found yourself in!
That's all for this blog! If you have any further questions, why not join our growing Discord community? There you can get the latest info on Cassette Beasts, as well as participate in exclusive events and gameplay streams! We have lots of exciting news coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled!
In our last Steam Blog we talked about the in-depth fusion system, a powerful game system that allows you to fuse two different monster forms into a unique fully-animated sprite combination. This system can generate over fourteen thousand unique fusions that will allow you as a player to fully customize your team to fit your unique style!
As part of the Guerrilla Collective digital games showcase we now have more details and new gameplay footage to share!
[previewyoutube=H_TebiMOPvw;full][/previewyoutube]
Click the Wishlist and Follow buttons on Cassette Beasts store page to help support us! You can also join our growing Discord community to be a part of exclusive streams, Q&A sessions, and keep abreast of the latest info.
Hey folks, Tom and Jay here -- were the duo behind Cassette Beasts! Cassette Beasts is our dream game, an open-world monster-fusing RPG!
I dont know how best to break the news. Youre stuck here. We all are.
Welcome to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by creatures youve only dreamed of, nightmares you hopefully havent, and a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home youll need to explore every inch of the island, and record monsters to tape to gain their abilities!
But youre not alone. Youll make many good friends along the way, and battle alongside them. Friendships are critical to your progress -- the closer you are to your companions, the stronger you become when you fuse with them!
We thought wed start things off with an introduction to the game and its features.
Monsters
The island of New Wirral is teeming with monsters, but by recording them with your cassette player, you can transform into your own monster forms for battle! Your monster forms can be equipped with powerful and tactical battle moves and can evolve into even more powerful forms. With 120 monsters to encounter and record, there are many battles ahead of you!
Fusion
Cassette Beasts headline feature is its Fusion System, which allows it to generate unique, fully-animated sprites for any combination of two monsters. Any two of the 120 monster forms can be fused, creating over fourteen thousand unique fusions. You can see how this works with a select few monsters on our web-based demo. Fusion works like a temporary evolution during battle. After transforming your player character and chosen (human) companion into monsters, you can fuse them into a single fighter. From then on, until you un-fuse, the two characters work as one, with combined elemental types, combined stats, and access to both sets of moves. Some of your opponents have access to this ability too!
Open World
New Wirral might be a small island, but its densely packed with secrets you can explore at your own pace. Once recorded, certain monster forms allow you to use unique abilities while in human form. Youll need these to help you get around, solve puzzles, and locate dungeons. Glide, fly, swim, dash, or turn magnetic!
FAQ
Weve compiled some answers to the most common questions we are asked into an FAQ!
Who are we?
Were Bytten Studio, and were making Cassette Beasts because its the game we want to play! Were lifelong fans of the monster-collecting RPG genre, and are keen to give it our own weird twist. You might have heard of the first game we released as a studio -- Lennas Inception, which has been in several charity bundles -- or the other games we worked on before that: Stardew Valley, Starbound, and Wargroove. Cassette Beasts fusion system draws on all of our experience in monster design, procedural systems and making memorable characters.
When & where is it coming out?
Cassette Beasts is being published by Raw Fury, and is coming to Windows and Linux on Steam, as well as Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Game Pass, and Nintendo Switch. No release date has been announced yet.
Is there multiplayer?
Weve envisioned Cassette Beasts as a single-player experience first, rather than as a competitive or online multiplayer game. However, there is local co-op integration where a second player is able to take control of the companion character both in the world and in battle!
Will we be releasing the OST?
Yes, we aim to have the OST available on launch!
Will there be a demo?
Wed like to have a public demo if the timing worked out right for it! Watch this space.
Is there a wiki?
We're working on an official wiki! It's not quite ready to go live yet but it will be soon.
What's Next?
Were aiming to post more updates like this to Steam so stay tuned for future blog posts and let us know in the comments what youd like us to cover! Click the Wishlist and Follow buttons on Cassette Beasts store page to help support us! You can also join our growing Discord community to be a part of exclusive streams, Q&A sessions, and keep abreast of the latest info.
Cassette Beasts
Bytten Studio
Bytten Studio
Coming Soon
RPG Singleplayer Multiplayer Coop
GameBillet
8.23 /
€
Game News Posts 76
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🎮 Full Controller Support
Overwhelmingly Positive
(6603 reviews)
https://www.cassettebeasts.com
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1321440
[921.86 M]
Collect awesome monster forms to use during turn-based battles in this indie open-world RPG. Combine any two monster forms using Cassette Beasts’ Fusion System to create unique and powerful new ones!
Welcome to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by creatures you’ve only dreamed of, nightmares you hopefully haven’t, and a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home you’ll need to explore every inch of the island, and record monsters to tape to gain their abilities!
Features
- Transform into monsters using… retro cassette tapes?!
Faced with the constant threat of monster attacks, the residents of Harbourtown, New Wirral choose to fight fire with fire. Record a monster to tape, then play it back to take on its form for battle! - Fuse monster forms
Getting close to your companion has benefits–while transformed you can combine your strengths to gain the upper hand in battle! Any two monster forms can be fused to produce unique, fully-animated new fusion forms. - Explore a rich open world
Certain monster abilities can be used in human form. You’ll need these to help you get around, solve puzzles, and locate dungeons. Glide, fly, swim, climb, dash, go invisible, or turn magnetic! - Travel alongside a diverse cast of human companions
Never fight alone! Form bonds, spend time together, and help your selected partner complete personal goals to become a better team. The strength of your relationship determines how well you’re able to fuse! - Master a deep battle system
Take advantage of elemental chemistry to apply extra buffs or debuffs alongside your attack, or even alter your opponent’s elemental type!
- OS: Ubuntu 16.04
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