More than once this year I have gone back to play games I missed from studios that bought out things I love. I’ve really enjoyed seeing previous works that can show you first attempts at stories, ideas and mechanics that would become much stronger in a later form.
Bytten Studios, based in Brighton released Cassette Beasts this year and it is quietly one of the best and most interesting JRPGs in a while. A grown up Pokémon that shows love and respect to the genre’s history.
Bytten’s previous work was this, Lenna’s Inception and the team were clearly Nintendo fans as this is their take, their love letter to The Legend of Zelda (TLOZ).
Much like Cassette Beasts does, Lenna’s Inception follows the formula whilst also playing with it and breaking through its edges.
The story itself starts with you as protagonist Lenna teaching her class when suddenly the school is pulled away, by a glitch?
Lenna goes to find the village elder who she finds dead, with a message written in blood “It’s to go alo…”. To any fan of TLOZ this is quite familiar.
Soon after comes in a tunic wearing boy named Lance, Lenna hand’s over the blade the elder was grasping and they go to a tutorial area where Lance dies.
At first this seems quite funny, you wonder if the tone of the game is going to be “edgy” but thankfully what follows is much smarter and more mature than the intro may lead you to believe.
Without spoiling any more of the story Lenna goes on a quest, she has eight dungeons to enter with bosses and unique items that let her progress further. The usual TLOZ affair except for one key difference and that is the dungeons are procedurally generated.
Again much like Bytten would go on to do with Cassette Beasts, this game isn’t a retread it has its own modern innovations and giving the game a lot of replayability via procedural generation is one of them. Also included which is great for the speedrunning crowd is that worlds can be seeded so if you don’t want a random experience on a repeat playthrough you can.
Unfortunately while I have the utmost respect for giving these options to the speedrunning communities and the like, and I really appreciate ideas above just simple polish I would have preferred procedural generation wasn’t a part of the game.
Not a particular new take but procedural generation never quite shows the art or thoughtfulness that a crafted experience can, even with a good selection of tile palettes and enemy designs the dungeons all feel very similar. Classic TLOZ also has great emphasis on dungeons not only having unique looks but puzzles and mechanics - there is very little of that here.
Almost all of the new items you obtain for traversal may as well be keys - melt ice, pick up rocks, shoot target boards, all of these are single squares taken out by one item.
Worse still is the puzzles or lack thereof, each dungeon simply has some block pushing which looks aesthetically the same in each of them and that’s it until the final dungeon which isn’t procedurally generated.
Between the fairly boring puzzles and layouts of the dungeons the combat itself is quite easy and fairly flaccid. You can unlock different swords and a few other items throughout your journey but none of these ever truly change how it feels.
This extends to the bosses, the (again like Cassette Beasts) Archangels which have fantastic designs but are as good as the most middling TLOZ boss at best.
It’s a huge shame because the presentation is fantastic but the content is lacking, like a beautifully prepared dinner that tastes like a ready meal.
One thing that needs to be mentioned is how Bytten does a fantastic job in their homage, not just to the Zelda games of the past but also glitches and what surrounds that.
A lot of the plot circles around an overflow glitch happening, the start of the game uses visual glitches like they are natural disasters and towards the end of the game you are deep in broken looking places and screen wrapping your way through.
This again is very cool but personally a part of the game I found quite frustrating, it was nice to finally get into a more crafted part of the game but it was actually for me a huge difficulty spike.
Finally another “but”. Lenna’s Inception has a very smart story that uses the glitch elements and plays with the format of the genre in a quite Undertale style.
There are multiple endings and to achieve the “Perfect Ending” you have to do things a little differently than you would expect.
It’s cool and it gives the game replay value, but without knowing this beforehand you can find yourself doing a lot of side quests for items that you ultimately have actually missed the chance to use. In many games it’d be fine because you could go back or maybe there would be a NG+ but Lenna’s Inception doesn’t work that way because again its innovation of procedural generation encourages full replays.
For me, because my enjoyment came from the innovation, the ideas and the plot but not the actual dungeon crawling and world exploring I could not bring myself to go through it again.
At this point I like to suggest if it’s worth buying a game but also if there are issues: what to do.
I think Lenna’s Inception is definitely worth picking up and seeing through yourself, if just to support a British Indie Dev that is doing great work with wonderful ideas, great art and fantastic music.
However I don’t know what to do about the multiple endings. Maybe if you play through in co-op a second playthrough will be more enjoyable, you could look up what to do first but I wouldn’t want to spoil it ahead of time as I value discovery (I hate I’ve spoiled as much as I have).
The only other answer is to do what I did, everything you can and then watch YouTube videos afterwards but honestly, that’s disappointing.
This may not be the most glowing review but I am definitely a fan of this studio and eagerly look forward to what is next from them.
Bytten Studios, based in Brighton released Cassette Beasts this year and it is quietly one of the best and most interesting JRPGs in a while. A grown up Pokémon that shows love and respect to the genre’s history.
Bytten’s previous work was this, Lenna’s Inception and the team were clearly Nintendo fans as this is their take, their love letter to The Legend of Zelda (TLOZ).
Much like Cassette Beasts does, Lenna’s Inception follows the formula whilst also playing with it and breaking through its edges.
The story itself starts with you as protagonist Lenna teaching her class when suddenly the school is pulled away, by a glitch?
Lenna goes to find the village elder who she finds dead, with a message written in blood “It’s to go alo…”. To any fan of TLOZ this is quite familiar.
Soon after comes in a tunic wearing boy named Lance, Lenna hand’s over the blade the elder was grasping and they go to a tutorial area where Lance dies.
At first this seems quite funny, you wonder if the tone of the game is going to be “edgy” but thankfully what follows is much smarter and more mature than the intro may lead you to believe.
Without spoiling any more of the story Lenna goes on a quest, she has eight dungeons to enter with bosses and unique items that let her progress further. The usual TLOZ affair except for one key difference and that is the dungeons are procedurally generated.
Again much like Bytten would go on to do with Cassette Beasts, this game isn’t a retread it has its own modern innovations and giving the game a lot of replayability via procedural generation is one of them. Also included which is great for the speedrunning crowd is that worlds can be seeded so if you don’t want a random experience on a repeat playthrough you can.
Unfortunately while I have the utmost respect for giving these options to the speedrunning communities and the like, and I really appreciate ideas above just simple polish I would have preferred procedural generation wasn’t a part of the game.
Not a particular new take but procedural generation never quite shows the art or thoughtfulness that a crafted experience can, even with a good selection of tile palettes and enemy designs the dungeons all feel very similar. Classic TLOZ also has great emphasis on dungeons not only having unique looks but puzzles and mechanics - there is very little of that here.
Almost all of the new items you obtain for traversal may as well be keys - melt ice, pick up rocks, shoot target boards, all of these are single squares taken out by one item.
Worse still is the puzzles or lack thereof, each dungeon simply has some block pushing which looks aesthetically the same in each of them and that’s it until the final dungeon which isn’t procedurally generated.
Between the fairly boring puzzles and layouts of the dungeons the combat itself is quite easy and fairly flaccid. You can unlock different swords and a few other items throughout your journey but none of these ever truly change how it feels.
This extends to the bosses, the (again like Cassette Beasts) Archangels which have fantastic designs but are as good as the most middling TLOZ boss at best.
It’s a huge shame because the presentation is fantastic but the content is lacking, like a beautifully prepared dinner that tastes like a ready meal.
One thing that needs to be mentioned is how Bytten does a fantastic job in their homage, not just to the Zelda games of the past but also glitches and what surrounds that.
A lot of the plot circles around an overflow glitch happening, the start of the game uses visual glitches like they are natural disasters and towards the end of the game you are deep in broken looking places and screen wrapping your way through.
This again is very cool but personally a part of the game I found quite frustrating, it was nice to finally get into a more crafted part of the game but it was actually for me a huge difficulty spike.
Finally another “but”. Lenna’s Inception has a very smart story that uses the glitch elements and plays with the format of the genre in a quite Undertale style.
There are multiple endings and to achieve the “Perfect Ending” you have to do things a little differently than you would expect.
It’s cool and it gives the game replay value, but without knowing this beforehand you can find yourself doing a lot of side quests for items that you ultimately have actually missed the chance to use. In many games it’d be fine because you could go back or maybe there would be a NG+ but Lenna’s Inception doesn’t work that way because again its innovation of procedural generation encourages full replays.
For me, because my enjoyment came from the innovation, the ideas and the plot but not the actual dungeon crawling and world exploring I could not bring myself to go through it again.
At this point I like to suggest if it’s worth buying a game but also if there are issues: what to do.
I think Lenna’s Inception is definitely worth picking up and seeing through yourself, if just to support a British Indie Dev that is doing great work with wonderful ideas, great art and fantastic music.
However I don’t know what to do about the multiple endings. Maybe if you play through in co-op a second playthrough will be more enjoyable, you could look up what to do first but I wouldn’t want to spoil it ahead of time as I value discovery (I hate I’ve spoiled as much as I have).
The only other answer is to do what I did, everything you can and then watch YouTube videos afterwards but honestly, that’s disappointing.
This may not be the most glowing review but I am definitely a fan of this studio and eagerly look forward to what is next from them.