Cassette Beasts News

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 you’ve only dreamed of!

Join 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 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][/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 we’re giving you a peek at some of the things you can do in Cassette Beasts!



[h2]Collect Monster Forms[/h2]
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!

[h2]Rumours[/h2]
The people of Harbourtown love to share rumours and hearsay - there are not many forms of entertainment available to them after all!

When you’re 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 don’t 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 aren’t actionable, i.e. icons for activities that the player isn’t high enough level to take on yet, or doesn’t 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, that’s always an option! Collecting rumours is suggested for first-time players, but completely optional.

[h2]Archangels…?[/h2]
If you’ve 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 you’ll 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 you’re not prepared. Often it’s not enough to simply be a higher level. You’ll need to know your foe, and prepare a strategy in advance. If you’re 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. We’re looking forward to seeing which dungeons and which Archangels players like the most!



[h2]Vampires…?[/h2]
Again, if you’ve played to the end of the demo, you’ll 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!

[h2]Friendships and Romance[/h2]
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. It’s completely optional, with no gameplay benefits, but it’s cute!

We wrote a bit more about this in a previous blog post!

[h2]Join the Rangers[/h2]
We also wrote about this back in January.

Harbourtown’s 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 you’re 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 you’ll 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 you’ll get nowhere!

[h2]Rogue Fusions & Bootlegs[/h2]
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 you’re hunting bootlegs, you’ll definitely want to keep an eye out for these!

[h2]Upgrade Yourself[/h2]
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 character’s strength. This is the perfect place to spend the Fused Material that Rogue Fusions drop!



Ranger Wilma is an essential part of the Ranger’s organisation. Certain scarce items and upgrades, invaluable in the pursuit of Archangels, are stored and distributed by Wilma from the Ranger’s HQ in Harbourtown. The more your training under the Captains progresses, the more she’ll be able to provide you with.

[h2]Abilities[/h2]
You’ll know this if you’ve 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 I’m sure you’ll be zipping about like a bullet and climbing sheer cliff walls in no time!

While you’re not technically required to have the abilities to complete the main story (besides Mothwing Glide), there are plenty of locations you won’t be able to visit without them.

[h2]Unique & Roaming Monsters[/h2]
While we haven’t 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 don’t 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!

[h2]Postgame[/h2]
The postgame in Cassette Beasts is surprisingly big! To give you a taste, here’s a quick rundown:

Optional Bosses: I won’t 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 you’ve 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 didn’t finish off during the course of the main story is also still there for you to find and take on!

[h2]Randomisation & Speedrunning[/h2]
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 you’ve 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 you’re 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.



It’s 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 you’re travelling with, just pop back to Harbourtown’s 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 you’re playing alone, you’ll 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, you’ll 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 Harbourtown’s 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 he’s from isn’t clear, other than his quest is to rid New Wirral of the undead… but something doesn’t quite seem right. Why are these vampires wearing suits?

As for the other partner characters, you’ll 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, it’s time for us to go into more detail…

If you played our Steam Next Fest demo, you’ll 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 you’ll need to get stronger--and that’s where the Rangers come in…

Rangers
Harbourtown’s 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 you’re not prepared with a strategy of your own it can be a difficult fight.



Postgame
If you’ve seen these bad boys in screenshots and videos before and wondered what they are, they’re 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 it’ll 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 won’t hold back, and will unleash their perfected strategies on you!

And of course if that’s 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.
  

These options are our answer to the Nuzlocke and permadeath features the community has been asking for.

Speedrunning & LiveSplit Integration
A small but dedicated speedrunning community grew around our last game, Lenna's 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 you've 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 you've defeated, how many species you've 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!



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?





[h3]Sirenade #024[/h3]
Element: Air

French: Sirènade
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 don’t seem to have much awareness as to whether or not their singing is too loud for those around them.



[h3]Muskrateer #061[/h3]
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!



[h3]Weevilite #012[/h3]
Element: Plastic

French: Lumicrabe
Italian: Semaforello
German: Rüsselampel
Spanish: Semaforgojo

You might be able to guess - but this is one of the remastered forms of Traffikrab! The Weevilite’s 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.



[h3]Terracooka #076[/h3]
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.



[h3]Elfless #066[/h3]
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.



[h3]Macabra #028[/h3]
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.




[h2]General[/h2]

Various: When is it coming out?

Tom: It’ll come out when it’s 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 isn’t 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 Lenna’s Inception [Bytten Studio’s previous game] and Cassette Beasts?

Tom: 😉

Jay: You may have noticed a couple of nods in the demo - I wouldn’t want to spoil any further ones!

winfrey: How long have you been working on this game? Tom: We’ve 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: We’ve 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 you’re 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. They’re something a lot of people are familiar with, but are also cool and retro!

Lewis: How will you celebrate the game’s release?

Tom: Personally, I’m going to take a few days off to spend time with my girlfriend. It’s been a while since I’ve had a proper holiday. I think I’ll drink a lot of beer too. Cheers!

Jay: I’m 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 Fury’s testing team, their gamebreakers group, and the localisation team. They’re all under NDA though, so don’t 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: I’m 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. It’s the first 3D game I’ve 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 I’m busy making Cassette Beasts!



[h2]Monsters[/h2]

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 don’t 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 didn’t 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 you’d get were different. I think this would have been too complicated in Cassette Beasts. And anyway, something with that many types wouldn’t leave you with many species of each subtype.

I’m 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, they’ve 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 haven’t been too hard to come up with! Often it was the case that Jay would draw a design, and I’d 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 didn’t have any particular name in mind when he’d 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, there’s a lot! If you want the really oddball stuff - I’m an occasional lucid dreamer, so I get a lot of my ideas by mining dreams. That’s 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 - you’d 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 Madoka’s witches. And the way the relationship system ties into fusions is heavily influenced by Steven Universe, which we’re 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 you’re 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 wouldn’t 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, there’d only be a slim chance a player would come across one of the handcrafted ones.



[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

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: There’s 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 won’t make it into the 1.0 full release. If we get the opportunity, we’d love to add more after the game’s release.

Ryterex: Are there any plans for post-launch updates?

Tom: Can’t say at the moment. When we have something to announce you’ll hear about it.

Jay: The kind of support we’re 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 won’t be any online multiplayer at launch - we’re developing Cassette Beasts predominantly as a single-player experience. As for after launch, I can’t say for sure, but it’s 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 there’s 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 you’re really excited about / proud of in Cassette Beasts? Tell us more about them!

Tom: There are a few that I can’t talk about yet! But I can say I’m pleased with the battle system. Demo players are already praising its depth, and I’m 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. It’s 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 didn’t 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). I’ve always thought this was a fun idea, and I don’t know why more games don’t 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 wouldn’t 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 don’t 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. There’s also a romance option when you’ve maxed out the relationship meter - but it’s completely optional and doesn’t 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 - we’re going to wait and see what challenges and rules the community comes up with!



That’s 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!