It’s no secret that Cassette Boy is impressed by the classics. It’s a top-down journey sport within the vein of a retro Legend of Zelda, whereas your private home base is a small city like in an older Pokémon sport, full with a mother who is consistently wishing you properly. The sport’s blocky 3D graphics evoke Minecraft, and also you save at campfires that reset the world, like a FromSoft sport. Every thing in Cassette Boy even has a inexperienced tint that jogs my memory of taking part in video games on my unique Recreation Boy. However regardless of all the clear influences, it nonetheless feels distinctive: beneath that charming exterior, Cassette Boy is a sport crammed with intelligent puzzles that compelled me to make use of my head in methods I haven’t earlier than.
The sport’s major mechanic revolves round an thought “inspired by” quantum mechanics: should you can’t see one thing within the sport, it ceases to “exist” and stays in an primarily frozen state from the second it went off-screen. In case you push a block behind a wall, it’s not “there” anymore, and you’ll stroll behind that wall with out being impeded by the field. If an enemy goes totally behind a wall, it turns into invisible, will cease shifting, and may’t harm you. Because it doesn’t exist, you can also’t harm it. The sport additionally permits you to rotate the digital camera to eight totally different factors; think about it’s on a compass, and with a faucet of a shoulder button, you possibly can rotate it to the north “level,” then northwest, then east, and so forth. So, with that hidden enemy, should you flip the digital camera in order that it’s not behind the wall, it “reappears” and turns into a bodily being once more.
Cassette Boy then units up a bunch of puzzles that power you to mess with perspective to beat obstacles. Early on, you’ll come throughout a button that makes a platform seem on a river when the button is pressed down, and the button is subsequent to a boulder. Everybody who has performed a Zelda sport is aware of that the standard answer can be to maneuver the boulder to maintain the button down. However you possibly can’t choose up the boulder in Cassette Boy; as a substitute, the answer is to step on the button after which flip the digital camera in order that the boulder fully hides the pressed-down button. That manner, the button turns into frozen whereas pressed down, permitting you to hop on the platform to get to the opposite facet of the river.
Along with shifting the digital camera, you get instruments like a bow and arrow to hit switches and enemies from a distance and cassette tapes that provide you with powers to see bombable partitions or shrink you down. When all of it comes collectively, Cassette Boy is basically satisfying: once I was within the zone, I couldn’t wait to choose aside each new room to work by means of puzzles and seek for hidden treasures tucked away out of sight. There are additionally intelligent battles towards big, blocky bosses, all to earn moon fragments (the primary MacGuffin you’re tasked to search out).
Typically, although, Cassette Boy will be obtuse. There aren’t any maps to check with. You usually have to speak to the precise proper individual on the actual proper time to maneuver the primary quest ahead, and also you don’t have a lot of a sign of who that may be aside from a speech bubble over their heads. After you acquire a moon fragment, the sport will ship you again to the primary city however received’t inform you the place to go, so I usually acquired pissed off having to hunt out all the townspeople over and over. Among the puzzles additionally completely stumped me, and I normally had a full-game walkthrough open throughout my almost eight-hour playthrough in order that I may get hints on easy methods to progress subsequent.
However I additionally assume all that obtuseness is by design, and it harkens again to the sport’s inspirations. With older Zelda and Pokémon video games, I’ve fond recollections of wandering round, getting misplaced, and ultimately discovering my manner again on the right track with a sigh of reduction. With on a regular basis I spent struggling, I used to be compelled to be taught my manner round these worlds, and now I can recall easy methods to get by means of the hardest components of these video games despite the fact that I haven’t performed them for years. (Even the builders of Breath of the Wild assume that getting misplaced is usually a “very positive thing.”)
Cassette Boy evokes that old-school spirit. Even when it pissed off me, I normally didn’t thoughts the battle, and it helped me be taught my manner round. Often, I noticed that discovering the precise manner ahead simply required a brand new perspective.
Cassette Boy is now obtainable on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Swap.