Repairing broken cassettes, all while exploring the past memories related to the music, made for a charming time when we played Cosette’s Cassettes at the Sweden Game Conference this year.
Cosette’s Cassettes delves into the ties music has to our memories, having you working to fix damaged cassettes while learning about the life a young woman experienced with these tracks a long time ago. To fix them, you’ll play minigames where you adjust the pitch, try to guess the lyrics based on what you’re hearing, dodge around obstacles, and more. These minigames were light and entertaining, requiring focus, but not so much that you took your mind off of the music.
Cosette’s Cassettes doesn’t skimp on music, looking to create the mood and feel of 90’s songs with its soundtrack (which you should totally check out on Soundcloud). They’re wonderful to listen to on their own, and within the context of the game, create this feeling of past good times and laughter.
Should you do well in repairing these cassettes, you’ll unlock a B-Side for each of them, seeing a photograph memory of a young woman as you listen to her audio diary. It’s a heartfelt touch that helps you feel what she was going through with the music, letting us feel those ties between the songs of our youth and the memories we treasure.
With great music, a touching story, and some fun minigames to tie it all together, Cosette’s Cassettes creates a lovely story and a wonderful reason to truly feel it again. Its connection between music and narrative helps to make you experience the emotion of someone else’s memories, and will likely have you thinking on your own past alongside it. That it can do that with music you’re only just hearing for the first time yourself is an incredible feat, one making the game one of our favorite experiences of the show.
Cosette’s Cassettes is available for free on Itch.io and Google Play.
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