How Cassette Beasts is Much More than a Pokémon Clone

Introduction

There is no denying that Pokémon is one of the largest franchise in the world and the most influential series in the monster collecting genre of video games, and thus inspiring many games in the genre. Cassette Beasts, an indie monster-collecting RPG developed by the England-based indie studio Bytten Studio, is not an exception, as it does share similarities to Pokémon.

However, describing Cassette Beasts as a mere Pokémon clone is doing it a massive disservice, because Cassette Beasts executes many mechanics and aspects of Pokémon games in different, and sometimes arguably better ways.

Furthermore, there are things in Cassette Beasts that you would not find in Pokémon games, at least in the main series games, thanks to Bytten Studio's creativity and passion that a gigantic corporate-owned franchise like Pokémon could only dream of.

Features that Exist in Pokémon that are Done Differently in Cassette Beasts

By the time Cassette Beasts was released on April 26, 2023, the main video game series of Pokémon had reached its ninth generation with the release of Scarlet and Violet. Pokémon had existed for 27 years since the release of Red and Green versions in Japan in February 1996.

However, despite remaining one of the best-selling video game series in the world, Pokémon has got the reputation of repeating the same formula in their games over and over. Cassette Beasts, on the other hand, utilises some features and mechanics that exist in the Pokémon game series with their own unique spin on them. Therefore, even the similarities between Cassette Beasts and Pokémon are not as straightforward as you may think.

Monster Capture Mechanic

One of the most notable differences between Pokémon and Cassette Beasts is their mechanics to capture monsters. In Pokémon, you catch the creatures by using Poké Balls, but in Cassette Beasts, you do not actually catch the monsters, but you record the essence of the monsters into a cassette tape.

A common criticism of the monster-collecting genre is the ethical question of essentially enslaving creatures by catching, taming them, and make them fight each other, to the point that even Pokémon attempts to tackle it as the main theme of the story of Black and White (though whether the execution is effective or not is debatable). Cassette Beasts‘ method of recording monsters solves this moral dilemma of the genre because you are not actually catching the monsters.

Monster Battle System

The battle system in both Cassette Beasts and Pokémon involves fights between monsters. However, while in Pokémon you send out the monsters you captured to fight, in Cassette Beasts you transform into monsters to battle by using cassette tapes.

Furthermore, most of the battles in the main series take place in one-on-one formats, also known as single battles. In Cassette Beasts, you almost always battle alongside a partner, making two-on-two the format of most battles in the game, which in Pokémon is also known as double battles. Two-on-two battles require more nuanced strategies than brute-forcing a single opponent in one-on-one battles.

Type Match-Ups

Both Pokémon and Cassette Beasts have elemental types on every monster, and how these types interact with each other is a major element in their battle systems. However, how said interactions play out in Pokémon and Cassette Beasts are different.

In Pokémon, type advantage means dealing extra damage to your opponent, while type disadvantage means dealing less damage, and certain types are immune to damage from another type.

In Cassette Beasts, type match-ups are based on chemical reactions, so instead of dealing more or less damage to your opponent, type advantage means giving your opponent a debuff, while type disadvantage means giving your opponent a buff, and certain types and temporary change the type of the opponent in battle. For example, Water-type moves reduce the melee and ranged attacks of Fire-type monsters; Fire-type moves giving a healing buff to Water-type monsters; Fire-type moves turn Plastic-type monsters into Poison-types.

Cassette Beasts actually provides an in-game type chart in the game itself. You can obtain the chart by opening the Ranger Guidebook, and the type chart can be accessed during your battles. In addition, when you are choosing your moves during battles, you can see the icons that hint on the effects of your moves against your opponent.

Level System

In both Pokémon and Cassette Beasts, gaining experience to level up is a core part of the games' progression. However, there are differences in their level systems.

In Pokémon, from Generation 1 to 5, only the Pokémon you send out in battle and optionally the Pokémon that holds the Exp. Share item will gain experience after winning a battle. This means that if you want to add a Pokémon you just caught to your party, you often have to grind for experience points for the newly-caught Pokémon to catch up with the levels of other members in your party. The games starting from Generation 6 solve the grinding issue by making Exp. Share becomes an optional item that will reward the experience points you earned to all non-fainted members in your party. Starting from Let's Go! Pikachu and Let's Go! Eevee, the effects Exp. Share are present from the start of the game.

In Cassette Beasts, levels are tied to your human and your companion characters, though your monster tapes have their own level system in the form of star system — gaining experience points means not only levelling up your human and companion characters, but also upgrading the star levels of your monster tapes. Some monsters can be remastered (the Pokémon equivalent is evolution) into stronger forms when being upgraded to 5 stars. It is worth noting that experience points are shared between all your monster tapes as well, including ones that have been broken (or “fainted”) in battle.

Monsters with Alternate Colour Schemes

In both Pokémon and Cassette Beasts, there is a rare chance you may encounter monsters with different colour schemes than their regular counterparts. In Pokémon, they are referred to as Shiny Pokémon, while in Cassette Beasts, they are called bootlegs.

However, while shiny Pokémon do not provide additional benefits in gameplay, bootlegs do, since bootlegs can be of any type, and have a higher chance of getting moves (or stickers) with additional effects, referred to as sticker attributes.

Field Moves

Both Pokémon and Cassette Beasts have field moves — moves that are used outside of battles and often required to access new areas of the map and explore every nook and cranny.

From Generation 1 to 6 of the main series Pokémon game, field moves usually take the form of HMs, though some TMs also have uses outside battles. Both HMs and TMs are items to teach a Pokémon moves, and these moves take up move slots. From Generation 7 onwards, Pokémon games remove HMs, and assign field moves to certain Pokémon that you can use outside battles, so you longer need to worry about wasting move slots of Pokémon in your party.

 In Cassette Beats, it is your human character that learn these field moves by recording certain monsters. The game will provide hints to which monsters can give you these field moves through townsfolk gossips. Since it is your human character that uses these field moves, you do not need to worry about wasting any move slots in your monster cassette tapes.

Music

Both Pokémon and Cassette Beasts are notable for their soundtracks, and music is among the most praised (which is well-deserved, in my opinions) aspects in both, though Cassette Beasts does it differently in that it includes music with vocal lyrics: for the music of the main hub, Habourtown, the vocals play when you are indoor; for battle music, the vocals play when you and your partner fuse, which heightens the dynamic of the battles.

Story and Plot

The core plot of the main series Pokémon games, except for Legends: Arceus, is about a child going on a journey and become the best Trainer in their region by claiming the Champion title. However, the main plot of Cassette Beasts is about the protagonist finding their way back home after bring stranded on New Wirral, an island that exists in a different dimension than Earth.

The protagonists of Pokémon games become the new Champion of their region by defeating Gym Leaders or Trial Captains, then the Elite Four and the current standing Champion. In Cassette Beasts, the closest thing to an equivalent to Gym Leaders is the Ranger Captains, and one of the main quests involves defeating all the Captains across the map, but even then, you do not beat the Ranger Captains and become a Captain yourself for the glory of becoming the best monster battler, but to prove your ability to help the Rangers Guild to protect New Wirral.

Cassette Beasts also has a more mature and adult story than Pokémon. As a franchise primarily targetted at children, the main human characters in Pokémon are children, so the stories of Pokémon games are mainly about children's fantasy adventures to be the best Pokémon Trainer. On the other hand, the main characters in Cassette Beasts, including your human companions, are adults, and the game is not afraid to discuss topics and issues relevant to adulthood, particularly through the stories of your companion characters. The story of Cassette Beasts is also unabashedly left-wing with anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist messages, which I frankly doubt will get explored with such authenticity in a corporate-owned mega franchise like Pokémon.

In addition, Cassette Beasts' story can get genuinely dark at times, most notably in the cosmic horror presented by the Archangels, the eldritch entities that you need to defeat in boss battles to gather clues about a way out of New Wirral and return home.

Features Cassette Beasts Has But Pokémon Lacks

Cassette Beasts is not satisfied with just doing Pokémon's core mechanics in different ways, but it also adds features that do not exist in the Pokémon games, at least in the main series games as of Scarlet and Violet.

In this section, I am adding a counter for the things Cassette Beasts has that Pokémon lacks, to further prove that Cassette Beasts is perfectly capable of standing on its own apart from Pokémon. If Bytten Studios only want to make a Pokémon clone, they did not need to do these additional things at all, but they did it anyway. If this is still not evidence of Bytten Studio's passion for their game to build its own identity, I do not know what is.

Even if one day the Pokémon games decide to add any of the below features, it still would not change the fact that Cassette Beasts had done them earlier.

Character Creator with Pronouns Options

Character customisation has existed in Pokémon games since X and Y, but to date, none of the games provide options to choose your character's pronouns. However, Cassette Beasts allows you to choose they/them pronouns in addition to he/him and she/her, and your pronouns options will be reflected in-game.

I use they/them pronouns myself, so pronouns options are a welcome addition.

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Monster Fusions

The concept of monster fusions by combining the designs of two monsters together are popular in the Pokémon fandom, showing up in fan art and dedicated websites such as web developer Alex Onsager's Pokemon Fusion website, but they are not part of the official Pokémon franchise. Although there is an instance of a human fusing with a Pokémon creature in Sun and Moon, it is not the same as fusing two monsters together.

In Cassette Beasts, monster fusions are a defining feature both in gameplay and the lore. Any two of the 120 monsters in-game can fuse together, thus there are 14,400 fusion combination in total, and the nature and origins of fusion is also explored in the game's story and lore.

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Companion and Relationship System with Human Characters

While the primary draw of the Pokémon franchise has always been the monster creatures like other media in the monster-collecting genre, human characters do play a notable role in the franchise from the beginning: in the main series games, you play as a human trainer of Pokémon, battling other human trainers including your rivals, Gym Leaders, Elite Four, Champions and villains. In some games, you also occasionally team up with other human trainers in battles. However, the main series Pokémon games do not have any dedicated companion and relationship mechanic with human characters.

On the other hand, human relationships are a major focus in Cassette Beasts both in story and game mechanics: you are accompanied by a companion character throughout your adventures in New Wirral, with 5 out of 6 of the potential partners being human; each companion character has their own story and quest for you to explore; each have a relationship level that can be raised by gaining experience points with them, and higher relationship levels make you stronger when you fuse in battle.

Human characters in Pokémon interest me as much as the creatures themselves, because the Pokémon world is populated by both and humans, thus I find the humans' relationships with the creatures and each other also an important element of the Pokémon world. Unfortunately, I often feel that human characters are an aspect of the Pokémon games that are often underappreciated by the Western Pokémon fandom, who tend to focus more on the creatures themselves. Therefore, seeing a Pokémon-inspired game, especially one that is developed by a Western studio like Cassette Beasts, actually make effort in fleshing out human characters and relationships are the biggest pleasant surprise for me when I started playing Cassette Beasts for the first time.

Pokémon has a spin-off game that focus more on human characters: Pokémon Masters EX, but the fact that it is a gacha game means it is a glorified gambling game that wants you to spend real-world money to gamble to collect the human trainers. However, that is not the case at all in Cassette Beasts, since it does not have any microtransaction. In fact, Cassette Beasts‘ companion and relationship systems prove that Pokémon can do more with their human characters without predatory monetisation mechanics.

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Romance Options

Related to the above point about the companion system and relationship mechanic with human characters, the main series Pokémon games do not have any option for the player to pursue a romance with another character. The closest a main series game attempted a romance arc for the player character is Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, where the protagonist and their neighbour rival are implied to become a couple during the post-game story.

Cassette Beasts, on the other hand, as an addition to its companion system and relationship mechanic, provides players the option to pursue a romance with one of their human companions after raising their relationship level to 5, the highest without romance.

Even though I do not play monster-collecting games for romances, and I am not asking for Pokémon to add romance options to their games because I am not invested in romances involving fictional children, romance options are a nice addition to a game like Cassette Beasts that is made with adult players in mind.

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If the existence of the option to romance your human companion is not enough, in Cassette Beasts you can romance any of the human companions regardless of your player character's gender. In other words, all the human companions in Cassette Beasts are available as same-gender romance options, which is good for LGBTQ+ players like me.

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Canon Same-Gender NPC Couple

Pokémon does not have a single canon same-gender couple in any of its games. In the shipping side of the Pokémon fandom, especially among LGBTQ+ fans, some same-gender pairing are popular, but it does not change the fact that there is no character in the Pokémon franchise who is officially confirmed to be gay or attracted to the same-gender.

On the other hand, Cassette Beasts has canon LGBTQ+ characters. The most notable ones are the human companions, either. The game also has a pair of NPCs who are revealed in-game to be a married gay couple.

Looking for LGBTQ+ representation in monster-collecting games? Instead of waiting for corporate franchises like Pokémon to give you scraps, how about giving indie titles like Cassette Beasts a try instead?

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Voice Acting

Despite some attempts to tell more developed stories with more dialogue and cinematic cutscenes, as of Scarlet and Violet, none of the main series Pokémon games have any voice acting in their dialogue.

On the other hand, Cassette Beasts has voiced dialogue. Even though the amount of voiced dialogue in Cassette Beasts is limited, voice acting helps to bring the characters to life and add more character to the game.

It is more notable when you remember that being an indie game, Cassette Beasts could have completely avoid adding voice acting to save development budget, but the developers added it anyway.

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Oh, and there is more! Cassette Beasts actually has an impressive voice cast, especially for an indie game, featuring established, well-known voice actors including Yuri Lowenthal, Tara Platt, Allegra Clark, Aleks Le, Sean Chiplock, J. Michael Tatum, Jennifer Losi, Kayleigh McKee, Risa Mei, Marin Miller, Cindy Robinson, Edwyn Tiong, etc.

Bytten Studio and Raw Fury could have just hire unknowns to save budget, but nope, they achieved the remarkable feat of getting multiple famous voice actors for an indie game.

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Custom Game Modes

The Pokémon player base has various methods of changing up ways of playing the games for fun or for a self-imposed challenge, with the most popular including the Nuzlocke Challenge and randomizers. These modes of playing Pokémon games are never part of the official games.

Cassette Beasts include custom game modes that serve similar purposes as these fan-made game mods for Pokémon: permadeath modes, similar to Pokémon‘s Nuzlocke Challenge, and random, and randomizers. These custom game modes can be unlocked by completing the main story or through the debug console cheats.

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Level Scaling and Enemy AI Adjustment Options

A common criticism of the Pokémon games from long-time players is the lack of difficulty settings, and even the only pair of games that have it, Black 2 and White 2, require you to complete the main campaign to unlock. Moreover, open world design of Scarlet and Violet has been criticised for the lack of level scaling in opponents' Pokémon.

However, the settings menu of Cassette Beasts include the sliders to adjust the game's difficulty through the level scaling and enemy AI options, so you can make the game easier or more difficult as you wish.

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Built-In Mod Support

Pokémon modding and ROM hacks have existed in the Pokémon player community since the beginning of the series, but modding Pokémon games is never officially supported by Nintendo, Game Freak or The Pokémon Company.

Cassette Beasts, on the other hand, has built-in support for mods. In fact, the official Cassette Beasts wiki has modding guides, and the official Bytten Studio Discord server has a dedicated Cassette Beasts modding channel.

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Conclusion

While it is understandable to compare Cassette Beasts to Pokémon, Cassette Beasts has countless claims to forge its own identity apart from the pioneer of the monster-collecting role-playing genre, as explained throughout this essay. As someone who has played Pokémon games since the Red Version from Generation 1, but has become jaded with the direction of the series since Sword and Shield from Generation 8 and is losing interest in playing their recent titles, Cassette Beasts provides a perfect indie alternative for something different.

Frequent releases and rushed development schedules have taken their toll on the quality of recent Pokémon titles, resulting in cutting corners and sometimes glitches. Moreover, as a multi-billion dollar corporate-owned franchise, Pokémon is primarily targeted at children and meant to be able to be enjoyed by everyone. Therefore, despite a few attempts to do something new, maximising profit is still prioritised over innovation.

Art that tries to appeal to everyone, even if not bad, tends to be bland and reluctant to take creative risks. Cassette Beasts further proves that indie games can be much more creative than AAA games.

Therefore, if you think you have outgrown and looking for a more sophisticated and mature monster-collecting game that actually treats the player like an adult, go play Cassette Beasts.