Taking a first look at Cassette Beasts 2002 at Gamescom, it appears that they are refining what works and doing away with what doesn’t.
The launch trailer for Cassette Beasts 2002, premiered at Gamescom, is a tasty morsel of a teaser. For the players and fans who enjoyed the original lighthearted and colorful indie Pokémon-like Cassette Beasts, the news of the sequel was welcome, especially one coming so (relatively) soon. The first game was released in 2023, and Cassette Beasts 2002 will follow in March 2027, made by the same developer, Bytten Studio, and published by Raw Fury.
At Gamescom, I sat down one-on-one with Bytten Studio’s Jay Baylis, one of the only three full-time devs and creators of the Cassette Beasts universe. It was my chance to take the new game for a spin and talk with Jay about how it will be different while still staying true to the original.
“It’s very much a sequel to the first game,” says Baylis. From the art direction, the signature blocky pixel graphics of maps and sprites, to whimsical monster designs and, of course, killer music, it does feel that way.
Turn-based battles, which formed the core of the first game’s gameplay, have the familiar look and feel. What changed is the setting, the depth and breadth of the story, and the agency that players have in how to approach it all. Cassette Beasts 2002 takes place in a fictional area of London, England—a setting that the Brighton-based team at Bytten Studio was keen to explore. “Making an English game is fun!”, says Baylis.
From a strictly mechanical perspective, I felt the improvements to the player experience as I played right away. I had issues with the first Cassette Beasts, and my biggest gripe was the automatic camera movement that made it difficult to see where my character was going or even where they were at times. Cassette Beasts 2002 has a decidedly more 3D-oriented level design and camera angles that a player can control. The difference is stark and most welcome.
I point it out to Jay, and he agrees: “We’re working to address and improve on a lot of things from Cassette Beasts. It’s bigger-scale, and more fluid, and we wanted to have more variety in player experience.”
Some of this variety comes from a revamped NPC system—any NPC can be unlocked as a companion, according to Baylis, depending on which path the player takes in the early game. Unlike the original Cassette Beasts, which had a certain rigidity in how NPCs were recruited as companions and how their quests worked, Cassette Beasts 2002 responds to the player’s cues.
You can go anywhere and talk to anyone. (The new game recruited outstanding voice talent for fully voiced dialogue, including Neil Newbon, who played Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3.) Quite a few NPCs from Cassette Beasts 2002 can potentially become a companion—the launch trailer reference to a borrowed mobile phone is one example of that in the demo, and let’s just say the companion I got wasn’t the one shown in the trailer!
Another intriguing addition is the origin system that would not only allow the player to select their backstory and what drives them but also alter the story accordingly, although it’s unclear to what degree. I saw three options in the demo: one with heavier themes and implications and another more lighthearted. The third was a save file import to continue the story directly from Cassette Beasts, which I thought was just delightful, even if I couldn’t test it then and there.
My time with the demo was limited, and I could only explore a tiny fraction of the opening part of the game, including just one cassette battle. Still, it was enough to turn my overall ambivalence into palpable excitement for the March 2027 release. The parts I loved from the original are there, while the parts I didn’t are seemingly going away. From what I’ve seen, the team has stayed true to the vision while building on what made the original so special.
Bring on Cassette Beasts 2002!
