The game I played last week is called Cassette Boy. While it has the word ‘cassette’ in the name, and looks like pixel graphics games from the 90s, it has very little to do with these ‘analog’ nostalgia-coded trends that are making a comeback as counterculture in the face of AI. In fact, Cassette Boy features one of the freshest and most interesting concepts I’ve seen in a puzzle videogame. It’s based on a metaphysical question of the existence of objects in the absence of being perceived. It’s simplified a bit by Albert Einstein, when he once asked if the Moon exists only because people were looking. Reader, I’ve already lost you, haven’t I? I’ll get to the point.
In this game, we play as a boy who lives with his mother in a tiny village home. Every morning, his mother packs his lunch for him, and asks him to stay safe and come back home before sundown. The boy then sets off on his own adventure of walking around the village to help people out with various strange occurrences that seem to plague the surrounding areas. It’s basically like my childhood, except that, unlike in Cassette Boys’ neighbourhood, people where I grew up did not appreciate strangers wandering into their houses and bedrooms to open treasure chests.
Cassette Boy is a big fat liar. He doesn’t actually tell any of his villagers that he’s behind the mess to begin with. You see, Cassette Boy once stopped looking at the moon. So it broke into several shards that scattered itself around his village. The shards are equipped with magical powers, and make the local wildlife go a bit... well... wild. Cassette Boy finds himself with a newfound power which gives only him the ability to correct his own mistakes. Objects around him cease to exist if he is not able to see them.
The game is split into many quests, each of which is what I call a Shard discovery challenge. It’s quite similar in tone to the puzzle shrines in the recent Zelda games. You know, the ones where there is some sort of elaborate environmental hurdle to get across. In this game, Cassette Boy wears headphones, which allow him to “focus” and change the orientation or point of view of his surroundings. Changing the orientation can make hurdles disappear behind walls, or alternately bring helpful items into view. This game hinges on navigating and weaving through multiple puzzles structured around this core mechanic. At the beginning of each of these Shard discovery challenges, Cassette Boy inevitably acquires a new addition to his repertoire of moves and tools. That usually means you’ll have to end up using them to solve puzzles as you move further into the game. It’s a neat way of increasing complexity by forcing you to remember three or four new added action possibilities. I loved solving the puzzles, and I have no doubt that anyone playing this game will come out of it dissatisfied.
There is a bit of combat involved as well, but there is nothing much to speak of. Only occasionally does Cassette Boy have to draw out his sword to fight a slime monster or a sentient skeleton. At the end of each of these Shard discovery challenges, there’s also a boss battle. The boss battles are really smart in their set up. Apart from the jab, swipe and dash away, they also make you actively use the core mechanic of disappearing objects. For instance, you could simply change perspective to hide the enemy bosses out of view as you prepare and reposition yourself.
I’m not saying it is perfect — it is very much an indie product made by a small group of people in the Wonderland Kazakiri development team. There are smaller reset related kinks to be worked out within levels, and there’s seldom any direction on where I needed to go next in the game which made me stall quite a bit. Regardless, and I am being a little overconfident here — I think this might be one of my favourite games this year already! I’m frankly shocked that this game hasn’t got enough attention.
Cassette Boy is available on PC via the Steam store, Xbox X/S/One, PlayStation 4/5 and the Nintendo Switch.