Certainly one of my favourite issues about smaller video games is their willingness to embrace off-the-wall mechanics and take quirky ideas so far as they may go. Whereas large and even mid-budget video games are so centered on interesting to the biggest variety of gamers doable by iterating on confirmed concepts, small improvement groups embrace experimentation and creativity to face out. One such sport that caught my eye is Cassette Boy, made by developer Wonderland Kazakiri inc. Using a decidedly retro, Recreation Boy-influenced aesthetic, Cassette Boy is all about enjoying with perspective. Taking inspiration from handheld classics like Hyperlink’s Awakening and indie darlings like Fez, Cassette Boy offers the participant the keys to the third dimension in an in any other case 2D world.
The essential premise of Cassette Boy is easy: the moon has disappeared, and fragments of it have been unfold throughout the sport world. It’s your job to gather the fragments and reassemble the moon to stop the world from collapsing, and to do that, you might be given all the standard motion RPG instruments (a sword, bow and arrow, bombs, and so on.) alongside some decidedly unconventional ones I gained’t spoil.
Early on, a small pixel fairy offers you a pair of headphones that rework your beforehand 2D world into 3D, permitting you to rotate the digicam left or proper. This core mechanic is the inspiration of the sport’s many devious puzzles. As Cassette Boy‘s tagline states, “What you’ll be able to’t see… doesn’t exist.” In apply, this implies you’ll have to rotate the digicam to obscure obstacles blocking your path, shorten distances between your self and platforms, and even cover enemies so you’ll be able to slip by unhurt.
It’s an ingenious idea that the sport explores in some intelligent and surprising methods. Whereas at first you might be solely utilizing the change in perspective to cross by spikes or limitations, the sport shortly begins to layer on extra mechanics.
In a conventional Zelda title, you would possibly have to push blocks onto stress tiles to carry open a door; in Cassette Boy, you’ll be able to step on the tile your self, then swing the digicam round to cover it, conserving it pressed and the door unlocked. Have to hit a swap with an arrow, however can’t get into place to intention and maintain down a swap on the similar time? Hearth the arrow behind a wall to retailer your projectile in liminal house till you might be in place on the stress plate, then rotate the digicam to free your loosed arrow within the cleared path.
Not one of the required puzzles for development are too troublesome, however the world is dotted with shrines that comprise non-compulsory puzzle rooms that search to place your understanding of the puzzle mechanics to the final word take a look at. Probably the most enjoyable available within the sport lies inside these non-compulsory areas, although I used to be a little bit upset there weren’t extra of them and that the primary dungeons by no means reached the identical degree of complexity.
About halfway by means of your journey, you obtain the titular Cassette of Fact. This gadget enhances the perspective-shifting gameplay properly, as enjoying the tape reveals hidden components within the setting till the tape runs out. All of the sudden, it’s not nearly manipulating your perspective, but additionally paying shut consideration to environmental particulars to seek out puzzle options. Though the puzzle design by no means actually reaches the height of its potential, there are sufficient head-scratchers right here to maintain the sport compelling all through Cassette Boy‘s brief, five-hour journey.
Sadly, the sport suffers from a scarcity of polish and refinement in its RPG components and fight. The fight is akin to top-down Zelda titles, however with not one of the responsiveness or tight management one would count on from a traditional isometric motion RPG. Swinging your sword feels sluggish, the hitboxes for each your self and enemies are wonky, and character motion is so free that it feels as if you might be sliding across the floor of the bottom.
Cassette Boy makes an attempt to paper over these shortcomings with a easy development system. Defeated enemies drop XP orbs, and leveling up raises a handful of character stats (Assault, Protection, HP) that improve endurance and damage-dealing. Getting a number of ranges lets you simply stroll over most enemies, which reduces frustration from combating towards stiff fight mechanics. Nevertheless, enemy conduct is never attention-grabbing or different sufficient to make encounters remotely participating.
This moderately unrefined, simplistic design stings most within the boss fights that cap off every dungeon. Each boss in Cassette Boy serves as nothing greater than a big harm sponge, and most are underdesigned. For instance, an early flower boss can have its complete first part thwarted just by standing a number of toes away and peppering it with arrows; it gained’t even start to assault till the second part, the place it turns into simply dispatched with a number of sword slashes.
Some bosses try to make use of the angle gimmick, although the outcomes are usually lackluster. A robotic boss dons a power area in its second part, powered by pylons in every of the 4 corners of the sector. Thwarting the gadget is so simple as kiting the boss in entrance of one of many pylons to obscure it, then lazily swinging away along with your sword till it falls defeated.
Such points render even the ultimate boss anticlimactic, inexplicably shifting into bullet hell territory with its projectile spam that you could awkwardly weave between whereas slowly capturing arrows at its mouth. None of Cassette Boy‘s encounters are exhausting, however they fail to meaningfully interact with the puzzle mechanics and thus really feel misplaced with the remainder of the sport.
In actual fact, the fight is so ho-hum, the RPG development mechanics so superfluous, that I might’ve a lot moderately the sport achieved away with fight totally. Lots of the most acclaimed indie puzzle video games of the previous couple of years (Animal Properly, Blue Prince, and Isles of Sea and Sky come to thoughts) rejected fight mechanics totally and had been higher for it. I want Cassette Boy had achieved the identical and centered that vitality on increasing the creative puzzle mechanics to their fullest potential.
There are flashes of brilliance in Cassette Boy; the angle gimmick utilized to a top-down Zelda framework is delightfully novel. The sport has a comfy retro aesthetic and a breezy, lo-fi soundtrack. If solely the sport had not been so slavish to its inspirations, ditched the lackluster fight & levelling system, and leaned into the complexity the shrine puzzles trace at beneath the floor. As an alternative, I’m left with a sport brimming with promise that goes frustratingly unrealized.
