Cassette Beasts Facts

You can find facts and trivia about the game from:

• Cassette Beasts: The Art Book
• Trivia sections on the official Cassette Beasts wiki articles.
• Bytten Studio's Q&A and Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions:
  • Cassette Beasts Blog #13 - You asked, we answered! (28 February 2023)
  • Reddit AMA on r/JRPG on 13 April 2023
  • Reddit AMA on r/NintendoSwitch on 1 July 2023
  • Reddit AMA on r/JRPG on 25 March 2024

Here is a list of interviews that staff who worked on Cassette Beasts participated in and discussed Cassette Beasts.

Late 2019

Development of Cassette Beasts began^{[Footnote 1]}.

11 May 2020

Reveal trailer released.

19 October 2021

Bytten Studio's partnership with publisher Raw Fury was officially announced, with an announcement trailer.

29 March 2023

Main voice cast announced.

26 April 2023

Cassette Beasts released on PC and Xbox PC Game Pass with a PC release trailer, which also confirmed the release date of Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch versions to be 25 May 2023.

27 April 2023

Hotfix 1.1.2 live.

10 May 2023

Hotfix 1.1.3 live.

25 May 2023

Cassette Beasts released on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Gamepass and Nintendo Switch, with a console release trailer.

28 June 2023

Update 1.2 “Catacombs” live. Online multiplayer mode and "Pier of the Unknown" DLC expansion announced.

12 September 2023

"Pier of of the Unknown" DLC confirmed to be released on 4 October 2023 with a new trailer.

3 October 2023

Update 1.5 live.

4 October 2023

"Pier of of the Unknown" DLC released, with a new trailer.

11 December 2023

Multiplayer future showcase released, with announcement of its planned release in Q1 2024 and updates about its features.

25 March 2024

Multiplayer beta available on Steam. Multiplayer update confirmed to be released on 20 May 2024 with an announcement trailer. Android and iOS versions announced to be released in 2024.

22 April 2024

Android and iOS versions announced to be released on 4 June 2024 with a trailer.

20 May 2024

Multiplayer update live on all platforms, with a launch trailer.

31 May 2024

Physical copies for Nintendo Switch announced.

1 June 2024

Release of the mobile versions announced to be delayed until later in Summer 2024.

Cassette Beasts was nominated for The British Game at the 20th British Academy (BAFTA) Games Awards.

Bytten Studio was nominated for "Best Small Studio" at the Develop:Star Awards 2024.

On 12 October 2023, Bytten Studio wrote a Steam blog post "Cassette Beasts - Design & Expectations" about their design philosophy of Cassette Beasts to celebrate the game reaching 350,000+ players.

Cassette Beasts very consciously opens with exploration and combat within the first minute of the game and leaves the lore for later, because Bytten Studio believes in giving players the game first and selling the players on the story later.^{[Footnote 2]}

The YouTube channel Lockstin & Gnoggin has a video that explains the names and designs of the monsters and Archangels: EVERY Cassette Beast EXPLAINED! 🖭. The video was retweeted by Bytten Studio.

The idea of copying monster forms to transform into came from Tom Coxon's dream. Jay Baylis, inspired by Kamen Rider, later suggested doing the copying and transforming with physical cassette tapes.^{[Footnote 1:1]}

Another oddball source of inspiration for Tom 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.^{[Footnote 1:2]}

The presentation of Archangels is inspired a little by the Witches in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.^{[Footnote 1:3]}

The way the relationship system ties into fusions is heavily influenced by Steven Universe, which both Tom and Jay are fans of.^{[Footnote 1:4]}

The AP system in Cassette Beasts is taken from board and card games.^{[Footnote 1:5]}

Jay cited comic author Grant Morrison as an influence on the broader themes of the game (as well as the strange English surrealism of the setting), as Morrison's stories often explore the nature of fiction, multiple realities, and their influence on one another.^{[Footnote 1:6]}

Archangels Morgante and Aleph were inspired by Morgan le Fay and King Arthur from Arturian legends, but with an unusual twist that Aleph is portrayed as a conqueror instead of a "rightful king" to reflect Britain's history of conquest.^{[Footnote 3]}

The ideas for the other Archangels came after Morgante and Aleph. Their themes were kind of arbitrarily chosen to match the design Jay had given them.^{[Footnote 3:1]}

Bytten Studio made a point to not put in a huge amount of Japanese mythological monsters in comparison to mythology from other nations, especially since well-known mons franchises such as Shin Megami Tensei, Pokémon and Digimon are Japanese franchises; they do not want to seem derivative.^{[Footnote 4]}

Barkley was not inspired by anything in particular; he was added in the game to surprise players as a non-human partner.^{[Footnote 5]}

Jay Baylis, the writer of the game, has shared a style guide he wrote during development for writing dialogue for the partner characters in the modding channel of the official Bytten Studio Discord server. This can serves as a reference for anyone who is adding new dialogue for these characters in mods.

Casual friendly dialogue with very few Americanisms.

Common words and phrases:

• Thanks a million
• Sorry
• Brilliant

Often staggers her words, like, uh, this. Uses british slang where appropriate. Most likely to (mildly) swear/curse.

Common words and phrases:

• Uh
• Urgh
• Mate
• Bloody

American - uses a lot of exclamations! Like this! More like a shonen hero. Less likely to keep up with "lore".

Common words and phrases:

• Man
• Pumped
• Badass
• Buddy
• Momentous

Opposite of Eugene. Often ends with full stops. Less energetic, more friendly. More likely to discuss the in-universe lore than others.

Common words and phrases:

• Rad
• No worries
• appreciate
• unorthodox
• folks

Lightly used Shakespearian english. Very formal. Often uses quotes adapted (made less complex) from actual Shakespeare.

Common words and phrases:

• Dear [character name]
• Alas
• Spirit (instead of archangels)

Jay Baylis' favourite monster catching game is Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire.^{[Footnote 6]}

Tom Coxon's favourite monster catching game is Siralim Ultimate.^{[Footnote 7]}

This section compiles topics that do not fit into other sections of this page, but are commonly asked about by Cassette Beasts players that have been answered officially by Bytten Studio.

Jay Baylis had addressed the subject of Cassette Beasts not being available on PlayStation in a thread on the official Cassette Beasts Subreddit:

Releasing a game on any platform is a huge undertaking and lots of choices have to be made. Originally we focused on Cassette Beasts as a game for PC and Switch as we didn't think we'd have the resources to port to anything beyond that - however, getting the opportunity for Cassette Beasts to be a part of the Xbox Game Pass service meant we would also have to port the game to Xbox, of course.

Furthermore, Godot 3 (the game engine Cassette Beasts is made in) is not easy to port, and cannot be done "out the box" - it requires an external partnership to do so (unlike engines like Unity and Unreal). Only a handful of Godot games had been ported to Switch before Cassette Beasts and they were all 2D games. Cassette Beasts is the first game developed from the ground up as a 3D Godot game to ever be ported to console. This has been a huge challenge for both us and, more importantly, the porting team we've worked with! What's more, every update and DLC made takes longer to release with every platform you add.

This doesn't mean that porting to Playstation won't/cannot ever happen, but we wouldn't promise anything unless we knew for sure. Game development is a series of trade-offs, and decisions like this aren't really made down to personal preference for platforms - personally, I mostly play games on PS5 at the moment.

Bytten Studio never hinted at any possibility of adding new partners to Cassette Beasts. In fact, Jay Baylis had stated in Bytten Studio's AMA on the r/NintendoSwitch Subreddit on 1 July 2023 that:

[...]the current number of partner characters is baked into the design of the game in a number of ways, making it very difficult to organically add new ones in.

Sunny, a minor NPC who appears after the completion of Eugene's quest line, has become immensely popular in the player base despite her limited screen time, wishing she could have a larger role in the game, monst commonly to become a partner.

The reason why Sunny has little screen time and content was that she was added late into the game's development and only intended by Bytten Studio as a little side story after Eugene's quest to surprise players. Bytten Studio never intended Sunny to have a huge role or much content, and they did not expect Sunny would become this popular in the player base.

We believe that a lot of the secret sauce for Cassette Beasts' appeal is in its ability to surprise the player in various ways, so things don't get too predictable. Sunny is a character that I wrote into the game quite late, as I had envisioned her whole sequence of events as being something unexpected and funny that you wouldn't expect happening as a consequence of the questline that proceeds it. Sunny's appearance is, ultimately, just a fun little side story that I cooked up to add some more flavour to the goings-on in Harbourtown. However, it's clear that she's very popular for a character who appears in exactly two cutscenes, which isn't something we entirely expected!

[...]in hindsight, given her popularity in the community, we all wish we'd given Sunny more screen-time. She was a late, unplanned addition as we neared the release.

Sunny was a late addition to the game as I pitched a short storyline involving the gang rehabilitating a Landkeeper after Eugene's quest. It's very apparent we underestimated how popular she'd turn out to be!

Footnotes

1. "Cassette Beasts Blog #13 - You asked, we answered!". Cassette Beasts Steam blog. 28 February 2023. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

2. Jay Baylis' (@SamuriFerret) quote tweet from @DavidKayConrad. 10 May 2024. ↩︎

3. Tom Coxon's (u/tcoxon) comment. Bytten Studio's AMA on r/NintendoSwitch. 1 July 2023. ↩︎ ↩︎

4. Jay Baylis's (samuri) message. Bytten Studio Discord server. 11 February 2024. ↩︎

5. Tom Coxon's (u/tcoxon) comment. Bytten Studio's AMA on r/JRPG. 25 March 2024. ↩︎

6. Jay Baylis' (u/SamuriFerret) comment. Bytten Studio's AMA on r/NintendoSwitch. 1 July 2023. ↩︎

7. Tom Coxon's (u/tcoxon) comment. Bytten Studio's AMA on r/NintendoSwitch. 1 July 2023. ↩︎