My Ramblings

Welcome to my Blog section, where I talk about life, or video games, or whatever it is that I'm going to talk about.

11/16/2025 Entry: Cassette Beasts Weekend

Hellooo, just getting this page started. I feel like there is so much more code I could learn to make it more bloglike, but I can learn that later.

So this weekend, I saw the game Cassette Beasts on sale on Steam for like $10 CAD, and I had been eyeing this for a long time as a big Pokémon/creature collector fan. The pixel art looked sick, and the reviews were glowing. Then I read that it has couch co-op (which is like, not exactly right, we found? We had to use Remote Play Together on separate computers while sitting together but it's fine). I had to get it because it's been a while since Selin and I have played a co-op game together, but I didn't think she would like it much. Boy, was I ever wrong.

We've had our moments of frustration - especially Cece, she's the less patient one. (^人^) We have basically skipped 90% of the dialogue. Nevertheless, we have gotten completely addicted to it. It's a neat thing where you actually BECOME the monsters rather than taming them. You just obtain cassettes of them and magically become them and can switch between transformations. Which doesn't make sense when I describe it, but it's a very unique and cool idea. Also Cece is popping off with the builds and synergies and everything. You can have way more than four moves on your beasts and switch them out easily, so it encourages you to explore them more. So, our experience with battling has been more reminiscent of competitive-level Pokémon battles. And the designs, pixel art and overall look is BEAUTIFUL A+. We had fun with the character customization. I'm going to put screenshots up in my Gallery later.

The music was one of the things that kept being praised when I read reviews, but I found it kind of disappointing. There is voice acting and singing in the music too but it just wasn't for either of us. I feel bad that they spent budget on that and we ended up muting all the vocals. The battle music is decent and it has gotten stuck in my head. However, since they keep emphasizing stuff about the 80s in this game - cassette tapes, the names of famous 80s hit songs, an abandoned nostalgic mall, a guy wearing an NES powerglove - they should have made the MUSIC sound 80s too! I love me some synthwave! It just kinda has a bit of a more modern, generic sound to it though. Idk. I'm no music critic. Just wasn't what I'd have preferred.

There actually aren't many towns in the game. It's like one hub town and the rest is an open world that I honestly found to be strongly reminiscent of the world in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It's full of puzzles and you gain abilities that let you solve those puzzles/interact with the world better by catching specific cassette beasts. A great substitute for HMs!

As a shiny Pokémon enjoyer, I really appreciated their "bootleg" alternative to shinies. Basically, you can find rarer versions of regular cassette beasts that are not only a different colour, but a different type, too. Each beast has 1 colour variant per type. Pretty rad! The odds are also not too bad. Apparently, it's comparable to your odds with Shiny Charm enabled in a Pokémon game. We saw a bootleg snake thing in early game but didn't realize how rare it was. We were able to get some bootlegs from entering developer giveaway codes into our game, though. Selin got me a bootleg electric-type Jumpkin! I love Jumpkin!

So that's how we spent our weekend. We didn't really go out unless we HAD to! It's been great for me, because it was very much that time of the month. Anyway, I'm now very tired. Thank you for reading. I wish you a wonderful week ahead.