I’ve spent the final 14 years stunned that extra video games have not stolen the central gimmick to 2012’s Fez. A 2D world that you would be able to rotate like a 3D object to seek out hidden secrets and techniques is the form of trick that by no means will get previous. However the Fez-like period by no means actually occurred and I have been left to marvel what it could be prefer to play one thing even half as intelligent.
Cassette Boy is the closest I’ve ever bought to taking part in a recreation which may really rival Fez. Whereas it lacks Tetris blocks and made-up languages, it is stuffed with equally mysterious characters and puzzles to uncover as you spin each degree round in quest of solutions.
The moon is gone and also you, a small boy fabricated from white cubes, are on a mission to seek out it. Cassette Boy begins as a legally distinct Zelda clone—you pull a sword out of a stone within the first 5 minutes—and transforms into one thing else the second you have got the facility to show the world round as many instances as you need.
When you make it previous the intro, Cassette Boy opens method up. I might enter a room with three exits and discover myself taking place lengthy rabbit holes earlier than ever returning to see the place the opposite paths led. A protracted hallway with skeleton archers turned out to be its personal puzzle as I spun it round and round making an attempt to determine learn how to entry each adjoining room. Typically it was as simple as flipping the hallway 90 levels to disclose a doorway, however different instances it took climbing to the extent above and dropping right down to the place I wished to be.
Annoyingly, I found my one weak point with a recreation that requires you to carry a picture of a degree in your head: I’m actually dangerous at it. I am already directionally challenged in video games constructed like mazes, however Cassette Boy is even worse since you often enter acquainted rooms in fully completely different orientations than earlier than. The constructive impact of that is that you would be able to catch secrets and techniques you’ve got missed in rooms you’ve got handed by way of a number of instances already. However you probably have hassle remembering the place you got here from and the place to go, it is a nightmare that I am undecided the sport is making an attempt to impose on you. There have been a couple of instances within the couple of hours I performed the place I used to be beginning to get bored working by way of rooms on the lookout for the place to go.
That’s the cut price you make with a recreation as quiet as Cassette Boy. If it wasn’t so enjoyable poking round its world and feeling good for locating issues I wasn’t informed about, I’d’ve given up on it. Nevertheless it stored shocking me and pulling me again in.
I used to be caught on a puzzle for a stable half-hour the place I needed to stand on strain plates and rotate the angle to cover them behind the setting and lock them in place. (You are informed early on that something you’ll be able to’t see is frozen in place and rendered intangible, which certain provides me some theories about the place the moon went!) The issue was that each time I spun the room round so I may activate the lever, one among them would turn out to be seen and reset, elevating a wall blocking the lever. Then I had an thought: Is it potential to decrease the wall, shoot an arrow towards the place the lever might be, and rapidly rotate the room so the wall raises behind the arrow because it flies towards the lever? The fun I bought when it labored introduced me proper again to 2012.
Cassette Boy is the Fez-like I’ve all the time wished. The truth is, calling it that seems like a disservice to every part else it is doing that is not like Fez in any respect. I’ve seen footage of later areas within the recreation when you have got entry to bombs and different instruments that increase the scope of the puzzles and the way you strategy every space. I might’ve been pleased with far much less, nevertheless it’s thrilling to know the sport solely will get extra dense with secrets and techniques because it goes alongside.
Cassette Boy is out now on Steam.
