I just start­ed play­ing Cas­sette Beasts today. I’m a lit­tle over an hour into it. On the sur­face it’s a mon­ster tamer / train­er game like Poké­mon, but its def­i­nite­ly its own game with its own mechan­ics and so far, a pret­ty inter­est­ing sto­ry. I’ll prob­a­bly do a bit more on this week­end. Might even stream some if there is any inter­est so please com­ment if you’d like me to do that. 

The game starts with you cre­at­ing and nam­ing your char­ac­ter as you fall through a void. You wake up washed ashore on some island on a beach. As you approach a near­by vil­lage you get attacked by this bizarre crea­ture that is a mix­ture of a crab and a traf­fic cone. I nev­er said the game made a lot of sense. Some­one quick­ly comes to your res­cue and presents you with a Walk­man and a tape that will let you trans­form into a mon­ster. After win­ning your first fight you are escort­ed to the vil­lage where you quick­ly pass out. You awak­en with a doc­tor exam­in­ing you and you find out there is no way home, you are stuck in this world as is every­one else. You have to make the best of your new life in this strange new world…

So what’s sim­i­lar to Poké­mon is that you get to catch mon­sters and bat­tle with them against oth­er mon­sters. Instead of balls you record them on cas­sette tapes. Moves are con­trolled by the stick­ers that are on the tapes. the game cur­ren­cy appears to be based on var­i­ous resources you find through­out the world, wood, plas­tic, etc. Items can be recy­cled into these base mate­ri­als and shop keep­ers will trade you items in exchange for these resources. Pret­ty stan­dard stuff. I’ll be sure to share more as I get fur­ther into the game.