Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Interesting Puzzles
Atmospheric Design
Innovative Mechanics
Cassette Boy challenges players to rethink puzzle-adventure design with a perspective-shifting mechanic that blends inventive world-bending puzzles, exploration, and combat into a refreshingly clever experience.
CASSETTE BOY | BEST Indie Games Trailers
CASSETTE BOY || Date Announcement Trailer
Cassette Boy - Official Console Release Date Announcement Trailer
A familiar adventure that pulls from the likes of Zelda and Pokémon for its setting and story, Cassette Boy is nevertheless a smart puzzler with a great visual style. The dimension-shifting mechanic never gets old, putting a fresh and literal spin on traditional isometric questing.
Cassette Boy is a unique little adventure that will keep you thinking over the course of its short runtime. The classic look sparks nostalgia for older gamers, with a sweet story that could have been fleshed out further.
Cassette Boy is a quaint and at times interesting in its nostalgic recreations and core mechanical hook, but I just wish it offered more substance beyond pastiche. It’s one thing to faithfully recreate the atmosphere, aesthetics and mechanics of bygone platforms and games, but it’s another to make a cohesive, interesting and thoughtfully designed game in its own right, and it feels like Cassette Boy got its headphone wires tangled at the first step. If you have a gut positive reaction looking at the trailers and screenshots, then by all means, revisit this little Walkman to your heart’s desire, but for anyone looking for slightly more substantial puzzle or adventure systems, it might be worth waiting till this particular boy gets a CD player.
Cassette Boy brings neat ideas and some unfortunate baggage from its closest inspirations, leaving an experience that is novel yet underrealized.
Cassette Boy may be doused in the green hues of Gameboy nostalgia but it certainly puts its own spin on puzzles with its modern Schrodinger system. Using the familiar elements of the Legend of Zelda and combining them with a rotating 3D camera has you questioning much more than just what you see, but also what you don't.
CASSETTE BOY can change how you view the world with its mechanics and puzzles, but is held back by some odd and frustrating design decisions.
In much the same way FEZ once did, Cassette Boy reminded me that perspective is not just a mechanical trick, but a way of thinking. By asking the player to actively look at the world differently, to question what exists, what doesn’t, and why, it creates moments of quiet wonder that feel increasingly rare in modern games. Cassette Boy may present itself as small, nostalgic, and unassuming, but beneath that familiar surface lies a game deeply interested in curiosity, perception, and the joy of discovery. Cassette Boy isn’t just about how changing our perspective can be important; it can also be incredibly rewarding.
