Screenshots

Quoth the Raven, Nevermort

Hi everyone, I’ve got two new monsters to show you this week!

Nevermort, the plague-bearer.

Nevermort, the poison-type bird, is a pest common to the south of the island of New Wirral. Nevermort are most feared for their disease-spreading dive-bombing of passersby, and cacophonous squawks, but also pose a minor nuisance on Piper Farm in the west. Regardless, it’s best not to get on their bad side if you don’t want to be outnumbered–they’re known for calling to each other for help when in need!

It must be noted that the Nevermort does not have a beak—rather, it is wearing what appears to be a porcelain plague doctor mask. What face lies beneath the mask is something better left undiscovered.

Allseer, the curious watcher.

Whether the metal-type Allseer is a machine from elsewhere, or a creature native to New Wirral is impossible to tell. Allseer are mostly seen at night, around large bodies of water and dense forests, hovering several meters off the ground. They get their name from their unnerving behaviour, wherein they appear to silently observe passing humans with a single unblinking scarlet “eye”. Their motivations, and their underwater activities, remain a mystery.

That’s all for this week. As always, don’t forget to wishlist Cassette Beasts, join the growing community on our Discord server, and keep up with Cassette Beasts news on Twitter! Catch you all later!

Go Down Swinging

Hey folks! This week we’re showing off another new monster from Cassette Beasts!

Southpaw has a mean left hook!

Southpaw is a fast-moving, fast punching metal-type beast. Their bodies are coated with a lightweight and flexible metal that allow them to withstand attacks and deliver swift attacks. Unlike Palangolin, which use heavy armour plating and long-range weapons to fight, transforming into Southpaw gives you a lightweight and aggressive form that allows for a more agile approach to battle.

It makes you wonder: what if Palangolin and Southpaw fused in battle?

Combine your powers to become Palanpaw!

While most of the monsters in Cassette Beasts are designed in-house at Bytten Studio, Southpaw was designed for us by character artist Sami Briggs (Smai). Sami has drawn some really cool art for the project, and Southpaw’s pixel art sprite was drawn based on her initial concept below:

click to enlarge

When asked about her thoughts when designing Southpaw, Sami said:
“I love creating things that look cool, sharp and sometimes exaggerated, so I really wanted to design a beast that represents my style and tastes! I felt a half-wolf, half-robot boxer would be an interesting combo that best reflected what I was after!”

That’s all from us for now! You can follow us for more news on our Twitter page, and you can do the same for Sami if you’d like to see more of her work. Don’t forget, you can wishlist Cassette Beasts on Steam!

Unwind & Rewind

All good adventurers need time to rest, and what better way to chill out than by sitting down to chat with your companion? In Cassette Beasts, when you need to heal up, you’ll locate a campfire to sit down at, and spend some quality time with your travelling partner!

The campfire spots across New Wirral mark areas that it’s safe to set up camp. At these locations, you’ll get a chance to heal yourself, rewind your tapes, and transfer tapes in and out of storage.

Spending time with your buddy strengthens your relationship with them. Strong friendships create strong fusions, so this is not something to be underestimated. And who knows, maybe it’ll lead to something more… 💕

If you’re excited for Cassette Beasts, make sure to head over to our Steam page and wishlist the game! We hope to have some big announcements coming sooner rather than later, so stay tuned! You can follow us on Twitter, and join our growing Discord community!

Collecting Stickers

Hey folks! Today I’m going to run you through how you’ll be able to configure your monster tapes with new moves and abilities! Scroll down if you’re just here to check out the new beast, Palangolin.

This ‘rare’ version of Shield Bash also puts the target to sleep.

In Cassette Beasts you’ll fight by using your cassette tapes to transform into the monsters you’ve recorded. At first, your tapes won’t have many moves to use in battle, but as you spend more time using them they’ll unlock new ones. If you don’t like the moves a tape gets by default you can always replace them using stickers! A move you don’t want can be peeled off as a sticker, freeing up an empty slot for you to put a different move sticker down!

You’ll get move stickers in a few ways (including by peeling them off of other tapes), but what’s important is that you can always easily peel and apply them to customise your combat abilities. In some ways, finding a good set of stickers is just as important as finding a good set of tapes. Not all stickers are compatible with all tapes of course, so if a particular strategy you have in mind requires certain moves, you may need to take that into consideration when choosing your tapes.

Some stickers provide a passive ability instead of a regular attack. And some stickers affect which branch your tape will take when evolved. So they’re pretty useful things with wide variety of effects!

Occasionally, you’ll come across a sticker marked as ‘Uncommon’ or ‘Rare.’ These stickers come with added randomised attributes that provide bonuses over the regular ‘Common’ version of the sticker, such as increased damage, or a chance to provide a buff, or inflict a debuff.

Here are some more examples (click to zoom):

Smack is a basic attacking move that costs no AP. You’ll use this when you’re saving up AP for your big attacks. In addition, it’s typeless, so here it’s getting the Plastic type from my Traffikrab.

This version of Smack has two uncommon attributes: one that will sometimes let your attack go before others, and one that gives you a higher critical hit rate the more sticker slots you leave empty. Fully upgraded and evolved tapes have up to 8 sticker slots, so this is quite good!

Inflame is a ranged Fire-type attack. This one has two uncommon attributes that work really well together: one increases the damage dealt by critical hits, while the other guarantees a critical hit when you’re at a type advantage (in addition to the usual debuffs type advantaged-attacks inflict).

AP Refund is a passive ability, a kind of move that you don’t use manually, but is triggered automatically by certain conditions. This AP Refund sticker has one uncommon (green) and one rare (blue) attribute. The uncommon attribute increases the chance of AP Refund taking effect after I use another move. The rare one passively increases my Melee Attack stat by 3%. As long as I have the tape and the sticker equipped my Melee Attack stat is higher!

Elemental Wall is a status effect move that a lot of monsters can get access to. It creates a wall in front of the user can block incoming hits for a while. There are various ways of countering walls with type chemistry, multi-hit attacks and so on, but what’s interesting here is its rare attribute: it has a chance to automatically be used (for free) at the start of battle!

And that’s just a taste of the moves and attributes available! So far the game has more than 170 moves with plans for more, and over 60 different kinds of attributes.

Rare and uncommon stickers can be obtained by upgrading your tapes through combat, and from certain chests and merchants. Bootleg monsters have a slightly higher chance of unlocking rare and uncommon stickers when upgraded!

Palangolin

You might have noticed a new monster in the video above. It’s Palangolin, chivalric knight of principles and honour. Palangolins wield striking golden halberds, which they use to defend their allies in the heat of battle.

Palangolin, the heroic paladin pangolin.

Finally, in case you missed them, here are a couple of little videos we’ve tweeted over the last few weeks–including a quick look at the bestiary, and a timelapse of the day-night cycle! And hey, while you’re here, don’t forget to wishlist Cassette Beasts on Steam!

Mascotoy Story

What is the creature that shuffles across the empty expanse of a long-abandoned mall? The being which saunters onwards endlessly, despite losing much of its polyester stuffing? Some say you can occasionally hear them crying–but perhaps that’s just the sound they make when they’re devouring some unlucky soul with their zipper maws.

Mascotoy just wants to be friends…

Mascotoy proves that plastic-type beasts aren’t all fun and games. Once some sort of character costume, the Mascotoy is now closer to a shambling corpse. Whilst it’s slow, you wouldn’t want to be on the pointy end of its oversized claw. Perhaps if one were to record it, however, this unnerving entity would make for a formidable form to take in battle.

We’ve got some big and exciting Cassette Beasts news to announce soon, so you should keep an eye on our Twitter page! We’ll sometimes show off some exclusive looks at the game there, such as this sneak peek at the character creation:

If you’re excited for the game, don’t forget to wishlist it on Steam! Until next time!

A Fight To The Glitter End

Happy new year everyone! I hope you all managed to get some rest and keep safe over the holidays. Today I want to celebrate the shiny new year by showing you a shiny new visual effect!

Glitter-type bootleg Dandylion transmutes Dominoth.

We introduced Cassette Beasts’ Glitter type back in our Elemental Chemistry post. If you want more info about the types go back and check out that post, but otherwise here’s a quick summary:

There are 14 elemental types in Cassette Beasts, including some you’d expect, such as Fire and Water, and some you wouldn’t, such as Plastic and Glass. Out of all of them, the strangest is Glitter.

Type match-ups in Cassette Beasts produce status effects that can be either buffs or debuffs depending on which type is strong against which. In some cases the status effect can temporarily ‘transmute’ (change) the target’s elemental type. An example is Fire melting Ice-type into Water-type.

The Glitter type is unique in that it transmutes all types to Glitter (and is transmuted by all types). It kind of emulates glitter in real life–once glitter gets onto something everything that thing touches gets covered in glitter too! Tactically, it can be used when your monsters’ types put you at a disadvantage, but can go quite wrong if you get the turn order wrong and are hit with glitter yourself!

There are no natural Glitter-type monsters so your options for making use of Glitter are to obtain the Glitter Bomb attack, or to find and record a rare bootleg monster.

Bootleg monsters are monsters with alternative color schemes, types and movesets. They have a very low spawn rate, so are sort of analogous to ‘shinies’ in other games. Although normally Plant-type, the Dandylion in the GIF above is a Glitter-type bootleg, making it a literally shiny shiny!

Going Underground

Hey folks, here’s a little look at what I’ve been working on since last week: caves! Before I go into much detail though, keep in mind that Cassette Beasts is still under development and anything mentioned here could change before its release.

Side quests in Cassette Beasts can often take you to caves in any part of the island of New Wirral. Caves can be entered at any time though, so if you’re looking for valuable resources, rare monsters, or just new routes and shortcuts across the island, you may want to explore them anyway.

Caves can be found in a lot of places if you’re looking for them.

The contents of caves vary a lot. Some simply contain one of the caches the rangers leave around to encourage exploration. Others contains puzzles to solve, or test your skill with your movement abilities!

But one thing all caves have in common is that they’re inhabited by some quite fearsome monsters. Rogue Fusions–minibosses that are half one monster and half another–can be found here. These ferocious beasts attack on sight, and when they get to the surface can cause drastic weather and ecological disturbances. Part of the reason the rangers were set up in New Wirral was to keep these creatures under control!

Facing down a Plastic/Air type ‘Stardinoth’ miniboss–a fusion of Stardigrade and Dominoth that has an altered type and moveset.

Defeating a rogue fusion splits it into its two component monsters, who will then be able to have a chance at regular monster life.

Rogue fusions are a good source of bootleg monsters to record for your tape collection. Bootlegs have altered colour schemes, types, and movesets. Having one in your party can open up a ton of new battle strategies!

There are several much more substantial dungeons (and bosses!) to find around New Wirral, but we’ll write about those another time.

Several more substantial dungeons are scattered across the island as well.

That’s all we have for now! As always, to keep up with the latest info, follow our studio twitter account and/or join our growing Discord community!

If we don’t find time to post again before the new year, then I hope you all have safe holidays and a happy new year!

Fire & Ice

Hey, everyone! The summer is over now, and a cold wind is slowly but surely upon us. Development on Cassette Beasts is going well, and we thought it’d be a great time to show off some new monsters! To match the changing of seasons, we’ve gone for a fire and ice duo.

Elfless and Artillerex

Elfless is the first ice-type monster we’ve shown! The Elfless fashion crude masks out of tree bark in order to hide their true emotions. Rumours say that there is one day a year when all the Elfless of New Wirral gather to replace their old masks with new fresh ones. In battle, they are nimble and spry, and able to summon blasts of snow and ice with a click of their fingers.

Artillerex is a mighty fire-type monster, towering above the diminutive Elfless. Its body contains a pit of molten metal, which it can form into shrapnel and shoot out in blasts from the “turret” on its belly. Keen eyed fans may remember Artillerex from its brief appearance in our reveal trailer. It surely must be one of the most powerful (and biggest) monster forms you can find on New Wirral!

You might be asking yourself what these two monsters might look if you fused them with the fusion mechanic. Well…

If you have a monster tape for both Elfless and Artillerex, you and your partner can combine to become Elfrex!

That’s all for now! As always, you can chat to us and the community on our Discord server, and keep up with Cassette Beasts news on Twitter! See you next time!

New Wirral Park

Development on Cassette Beasts has been going really well! Today I want to show you some gameplay footage of New Wirral Park. So here’s Jay expertly dodging all the monsters and sneaking past NPCs!

New Wirral Park is the first major open area you come to after the game’s opening, with connections leading off to several others. We’re drawing inspiration from Breath of the Wild in the world design–there are many ways through each area and multiple ways to solve each puzzle.

There aren’t any flat surfaces you can see here that you can’t somehow get to and walk on, but sometimes you’ll need special abilities! These abilities can be obtained by recording certain monsters to tape. In the video you can see the Mothwing Glide ability and Electromagnetism. The rest we’ll show another time!

Townsfolk whisper rumours and speculate about something large buried under New Wirral Park. The Dandylions in the park must be guarding something, after all…

Cassette Beasts Quarterly Wrap Up #1

Hey everyone! It’s been 3 months since we announced Cassette Beasts so we thought it’d be nice to do a catch up of everything we’ve revealed since then – and maybe show off some new stuff as well!

Our announcement trailer reveal in May went down better than we could possibly have imagined:

  • Over 100,000 combined views across Youtube and Twitter
  • Over a dozen press articles including PCGamer and Kotaku
  • A bunch of new Discord community members, now 500+ strong!

Along with the trailer, we also showed off some monster designs, a look into the game’s chemistry system, and also the fusion system. Our in-browser playable fusion demo also let players see for themselves the capabilities of our fusion system!

It’s been fun seeing fans discuss their favourite monster fusions!

Since the reveal, we’ve been showing off snippets of the game alongside working hard on it:

Our reveal trailer song, Same Old Story, was also announced as a part of Black Screen Record’s free compilation vinyl “Sounds of Summer 2020”. It’s really exciting to see our composer Joel’s work alongside other talented musicians – it’s totally free to order the record so you should totally do that!

As a little celebration for our quarter-year anniversary, we thought we’d show off some new monsters!

Carniviper and Dominoth

Carniviper may exude a friendly demeanour, but don’t let its smile fool you – it isn’t particularly welcoming. If these poison-type beasts are encountered in the grasslands of New Wirral, they are known to silently watch any passing humans intently until they leave their vicinity. If not, they’ll become hostile very quickly! You may also have seen Carniviper’s evolved form before.

Dominoths can flap their large wings to take flight, and also whip up gusts of wind to attack their foes. Rumours are that recording this air-type creature uniquely gives the one who recorded it the power to summon wings of their own… That can’t be true, can it?

That’s all for now! Thanks for joining us on this journey so far, it’s been great fun! There’s lots of cool stuff involving Cassette Beasts we can’t wait to talk about, so keep an eye on our Twitter page. As always, feel free to come by the Discord and chat to us!

We hope you’re keeping safe this summer!