Cassette Beasts, Side B: Steam in the Subway, Earth Is Afire

I’m finally back with my promised second article on Cassette Beasts! If you missed the first one, you can read it here; that one serves as my mostly spoiler-free general recommendation of the game. However, I also wanted to do some deeper looks into the game, its systems, its themes, and so on, which necessitates some spoilers. I’ll give a general warning when I start getting into mild things (like discussing specific monsters or the game’s mechanics), and then give a warning at the midpoint when I start moving into more serious story-related spoilers (as well as a few mentions about the story of Bytten Studio’s first game, Lenna’s Inception, which I covered here). Generally, I think this game is strong enough that being spoiled wouldn’t ruin it for you, but if you are sensitive to those, feel free to take advantage of those warnings as jumping off points, or even bookmark this for later, and come back later after you’ve played it some .

In the first part of my Cassette Beasts review, I mentioned that the game lived up to all of the expectations I had for it after loving Bytten Studio’s first game, Lenna’s Inception. And I want to look at that a little more; I’ve already said that they make for an interesting comparison, but there was something specific that stood out to me when I was looking at what I wanted to cover in a spoilered review. See, while it lived up to Lenna in quality, it was actually kind of funny how much expecting Cassette Beasts to be like its predecessor ended up surprising me, particularly in its world building.

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Not to spoil it too much, but Lenna’s Inception breaks the fourth wall several times over the course of a playthrough, culminating in a few big reveals during the final dungeon that recontextualize everything you’ve seen to that point, in a way that directly calls attention to the fact that it is a video game. It’s a really big and fun twist, the kind of thing that makes you go back and think “Oh, why didn’t I notice that earlier!”, and I kept expecting something like that in Cassette Beasts. Maybe it’s not fair to expect some huge surprise like that twice, but I can also see why I thought that; there are a few moments where you can see some similar ideas popping up, so it’s maybe not too big of a stretch to think that Cassette Beasts might at least have similar ideas on its mind.

Cassette Beasts, Side A: So Many Things That I Want To Say

 

Editor’s Note (please ignore that the editor and writer are the same person):
As you might be able to tell from the article below, I really like this game, and have a lot to say about it. So, in order to prevent the sort of schedule slippage that can happen when I try and sort out more complicated thoughts, I’m going to be trying something new: running two, shorter articles. This one will serve as a basically spoiler-free recommendation, and the second piece that follows (schedule very much TBD) will have a more in-depth commentary, and include more spoiler-y details. Maybe the shorter length will make them both a little more readable too, we’ll see.

In the meantime, if you’d like, you could pick up Cassette Beasts now (it’s on sale as part of the Steam Summer Sale!) and maybe you’ll have thoughts of your own by the time part 2 arrives! And of course, as always, feel free to sign up for my email list if you'd like to be notified when that article goes live; I promise that I'll only send things when there's new writings to read!

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Back in December, I wrote about the greatness that was Neon White, and mentioned the excitement that comes when something that you’ve greatly anticipated lives up to high expectations. Well, I’m excited to announce that yet again*, another indie video game has pulled it off, with Bytten Studio delivering an absolute masterpiece in Cassette Beasts.

*I originally said “for the second year in a row” here, but 2021 had Chicory and Demon Turf, so I suppose it’s a little more frequent than that. We’re just in a good time for indie games!

I first became aware of the game while writing about the two-person studio’s previous game, Lenna’s Inception, which was my favorite game that I played in 2020. In fact, my memory might be wrong, but I think the announcement came out while I was doing research for that article? Either way, from the moment I saw that first trailer, I have been pumped, and I’m glad it’s lived up to all of my anticipation.

Tinykin and Recontextualizing the Familiar

Towards the end of 2022, I was trying to think of any games that I had wanted to write about, but just hadn’t gotten around to. It felt like things got a little backed up in my games writing last year, between some personal life delays, writers block on the Neon White article, and my non-games writing (like baseball and playlists) just taking up more time than anticipated. I might still end up writing a little more about games that I played last year (especially if playing them bled into this year), but at the start of 2023, when I thought about everything I played over the last twelve months and any lingering thoughts I had on them, there was one game that I kept returning to.

For a while, though, I wasn’t actually sure exactly what I wanted to say about Tinykin. I really enjoyed it, but there are only so many ways that you can say variations of “it’s good” and “I like it” before a review becomes boring, and I was a little busy sorting through other thoughts to pull together more than that. But over time I kept thinking about it, and I eventually realized that I did have a little bit more to say than just basic praise!

So, let’s start at the top: Tinykin is a 2022 3D platformer from developers Splashteam. It comes with a pretty simple pitch: what if Pikmin was a collect-a-thon platformer instead of a real-time strategy game? As far as basic crossover pitches go for a game idea, that one feels like it has a lot of promise; and it turns out, that’s pretty much dead-on! Of course, like any good cross-pollination of ideas, there are a lot of things that can’t be carried over one-to-one, and I think that Tinykin nails those elements in a way that gives it a lot of its own character and makes it even better than its simplistic idea sounds.

 

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It starts at the beginning, really; protagonist Milo is a small person who finds himself stuck on an Earth that’s much too big for him. Unlike the protagonists of Pikmin, though, Milo is a scientist, searching for the origins of his people and planet. And his search strands him not outdoors, but in a house that looks stuck sometime in the 1990s, with VHS tapes and dated appliances everywhere. And inside, he finds these small creatures, the titular Tinykin, who are drawn to him; as you might have guessed from the Pikmin comparison, each variation has special abilities that he can make use of.