anyway you should play cassette beasts. it's pokemon with schmoovement. you get to beat the shit out of landlords and the tumblr sexyman embodiment of imperialism. the equivalent of the pokemon league champion is a middle-aged lesbian who can transform into clockwork godzilla. it's technically an au of a shakespeare play. mothman and the flatwoods monster and the daleks are there. you can pet the dog because he's a party member and has his own social link. and oh god there's so many cheese strats
I am not the first person who has said this, but it is indeed surprising that Cassette Beasts does not have a big fandom on Tumblr, given that it has just about everything average Tumblr users want:
A wide variety of creatures whose forms you can collect, so you can transform into them in battle
Multiverse setting, which provides unlimited fanfiction potential
Character creator with pronouns options, including they/them
LGBTQ+ representation, including all the human party members who are bi and can be romanced regardless of the player's gender, a pair of NPCs are an actual canon old married lesbian couple, and an NPC who is canonically non-binary and uses they/them pronouns
Romanceable party members also mean you can form a battle couple with your favourite party member
Racially diverse cast of human characters: There are visibly Black and brown characters in both the main and supporting cast, including the party members
A playable dog character
Anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist messages
You can literally beat up estate agents and their boss
Higher friendship with your companion allows you to fuse your monster forms and makes you stronger in battle
etc. etc.
The only reason I can think of is the fact that Cassette Beasts is an indie game, but Tumblr has a fair amount of indie video game darlings, such as Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Undertale, Night in the Woods, etc.
Another reason is that many Pokémon fans are frustratingly reluctant to try or dismissive of monster collecting games that are not Pokémon, even if they complain about the latest Pokémon titles.
So here is your reminder to go play Cassette Beasts if you have not already.
To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of Cassette Beasts' release, Jay Baylis of Bytten Studio has made a Twitter thread to share some behind-the-scenes stuff about Archangels:
Ugh I gotta ramble a bit about the Cassette Beasts starters.
So the first NPC you meet asks you what your aesthetic is, spooky or sweet, which corresponds to the two starters, but you’re not actually shown what the starters look like.
And instead of an element type thing, you’re asked for your aesthetic. I just think that’s such a fun twist. They’re not even opposites!
And even the two starters tie into the lore of the first people to see the beasts/monsters, calling them angels and demons, bc they didn’t know what else they could be.
But the most fun part IMO is that Sweet actually gives you Candevil, the demon-esque beast, and Spooky gives you Bansheep, the angelic one.
Now, that’s oversimplifying things a little, because both starters branch at their first remaster (evolution), and go on to have a third form.
Candevil’s entire thing is like, colorful manic pixie dream devil. One branch turns into a demonic rainbow gumball machine; the other goes into bisexual flag -ish… alchemy witch. So the “Sweet” beast has demon and witch.
Bansheep, on the other hand, is emo, goth, and fluffy, yet angelic. Sort of. One branch remasters into what you’d expect — a ghostly halo-ed floating sheep. The other is uh. A black metal tombstone-hugging zombie ram. So Spooky does kind of go the way you’d think, ghost and zombie, except with sheep.
Aren’t these designs awesome? One of the main design philosophies for CB critters is “Don’t begin and end at ‘elemental animal’”, and I think the starters showcase this perfectly.
This is all a very long-winded roundabout way of saying, if you like creature-collecting games with non-cliched cryptid-inspired critters, interesting companions with their own character development, weird analog-ish horror, dialogue that really gets you thinking about the power of humanity and friendship, and they/them pronouns, please for the love of fuck, try Cassette Beasts.