Cassette Beasts remixes Pokémon but falls short of revolutionizing it

I fell from Pokémon after 2016’s Pokémon Sun. It was fun! But somewhere along the way, even the most seasoned monster collector experiences mon-fatigue, unable to remember what happens when you pit fairy type against bug type without Googling, or what in Arceus’ name is the difference between soil types and rock types. The dozens of hours it takes to climb from choosing a starter Pokémon to beating the Elite Four, one wonders: Do I still have this in me? In short, people start to age.

Tape beasts is an indie Pokémon-like with expired Pokémaniacs in mind. Instead of catching monsters with two-toned balls, here you record them on cassette tapes through a process the game winkingly tells you not to think about for too long. Visually, the game looks like an Octopath-ed Pokemon Black/White, featuring colorful and beautifully animated sprites battling against three-dimensional backdrops. The monster designs are creative and varied Traffic craba hermit crab with a traffic cone for a shell, and Bulletin, who is a very serious little bullet dude. The beasts come in one of 14 types, each with strengths and weaknesses. At first glance, it’s Pokémon all the way down.

Well… except the game starts with a quote from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and a sequence where you fall through some kind of wormhole into a world of cassette tapes and monsters, where a powerful Ranger tasks you with finding and fighting 12 Ranger Captains (think Gym Leaders, but usually without a building to their name) , next to A different Quest given to you by your novice companion Kayleigh to defeat eight archangels – mysterious enemies that cause the screen to warp like a rewinding VHS tape, each rendered in different art styles from the game itself – to return to your home dimension.

Sentence? I can’t say anything about what’s going on with the unintentionally eldritch images of Scarlet And purple, but you don’t fight an evil claymation angel in those games. That means everything Tape beasts is weirder than it shows, in the best way.

I was initially charmed by the manners Tape beasts remixed the Pokémon formula, starting with how Bytten Studio’s designers turn simple strengths and weaknesses into a complex series of chain reactions. For example, if you attack a plastic type with a fire type attack, the plastic melts, turning the enemy’s type into poison, which is then flammable when you attack it again with a fire type. However, if the plastic type were to attack a lightning type, it would isolate them, causing attacks that would normally hit multiple enemies to only hit one. At first the mechanic is simplistic, but soon you’ll be trying to remember things like “what shatters glass now that I’ve hit a mountain with lightning?” and “poison will make my astral being vanish gr when I want it to go mustache?”

These complications are further complicated by the fact that the game is largely fought two against two. You will almost always be flanked by a companion who can also transform into one of the beasts in your party. Also, you and your companion have health bars that differ from your monsters’ health bars. In addition, you can merge with your companion and create hybrid beasts from two of the game’s 120 monsters. Pretty soon you find yourself feeling the same intricate horror of Pokémon, but with philosophical jokes and a little creepy pasta thrown in.

Still, Tape beastscharm is undeniable. This is a game completely aimed at players who were kids at the time Red And Blue came out, who will laugh at Team Rocket being replaced by a group of evil landlords who look like vampires and talk about ace to the poor. Players who can appreciate the 90’s mall aesthetic and the perfectly named “ElectroShack”. Players who know what a cassette even is in the first place, to whom the joke that the healing item in this game is a pencil that rewinds cassette tapes actually makes sense.

As the hours passed, I got the feeling that Tape beasts was a fresh start for the Pokémon-like genre that was waning. In addition to the complicated creep, the replay kicks in and the battles start to drag – just like they can in Pokémon. Other problems are unique to it Tape beasts: Because monsters are always on the same level as the player character and can swap their “stickers” (the in-game term for skills, allowing you to make the best fire-like moves you like on any beast you choose) , there is less and less incentive to include them all after you build a team that works for you. If you ever find yourself dying out in Pokémon endgame, I suspect you’ll feel the same way here too.

With some of the same problems plaguing his source of inspiration, Tape beasts doesn’t so much evolve the formula, but swap it for another type. It’s fun, it looks and sounds great, and it works beautifully on Steam Deck, for what it’s worth. But the gloss is only superficial, with the underlying mechanics, chain reactions and all, matching but not surpassing Game Freak’s best adventures. Of course, given the two-man development team here, that’s an achievement in itself.

At the end of the day, Tape beasts is a remix of a song you like. Just don’t expect a remaster.

Cassette beasts released April 26 on Linux and Windows PC; it will be available on May 25 on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The game has been reviewed on PC. Vox Media has partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy here.