TL;DR – A joyous exploration of that cliff in time when you transition from one stage of life to the next, full of its promises, dangers, and the desire to look back while you are hurtling forward.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Mixtape Review Introduction

Every form of art throughout history has explored that threshold on which a child becomes an adult. That moment when you become a complete being, more than just the sum of your family circumstances. In cinema, we are served a plethora of powerful examples: 10 Things I Hate About You, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Edge of Seventeen, Booksmart, The Princess Diaries, & Clueless, to name just a few. But until today, I have not seen a video game really get into the weeds of that genre; well, this changes now.  

So, to set the scene, Stacey Rockford (Bella DeLong), Van Slater (Max Korman), and Cassandra Morino (Jessica Ma) are three best friends living in the mountainous north of California in the early 1990s. They are cruising through the streets of their town on skateboards, celebrating the end of High School. But this is also a crossroads; some are leaving their claustrophobic town, some are staying, with all three being pulled to different parts of the country. Stacey’s life revolves around music, and she has created the perfect playlist for their last full day together, but fate might have different ideas.    

Gameplay

Now, here is where I must confess that I played this game on a keyboard and a mouse, even though the game goes out of its way to recommend a controller. Look, I tried, I pulled my room apart looking for the controller, and then the cable to attach it to my PC, but it didn’t work. Well, for those of you who also find yourselves controllerless, I can say that the game still plays perfectly well with a mouse. Okay, there was one incident with a tape rewind where I almost rage-quit the game before working out what motion they wanted me to undertake, but I can’t say for sure if that was a game or user issue, so that I will let that one pass.

While I would not go as far as to say that the game is played on-rails, bar that one section, you are literally on rails. But it is a tight corridor that you are traversing. The game is split between these dialogue sections, which are broken up by flowing movement sections, like racing down the side of a mountain on your skateboard, and the occasional mini-game. Each of these sections are quite forgiving, which has a nice rewind feature that I got some use out of. They also completely capture the mood of the moment, when you need to be uplifted, the game introduces a section where you soar across a meadow. Each of these sections has its own controls, but they all felt quite intuitive for anyone who has played any sort of game like this before. Though I was glad that there was only one sequence button push.     

Music

We cannot talk about this game without exploring its musical inspirations because they make up one of the main emotional touchstones of the game. We are introduced to the CD player right from the start, and that becomes the link that unites the whole game together. It also means that if you remembered having CDs, then you will probably know where you are in the game based on which track number is playing. You can tell that each song has been meticulously picked for the moment and then mixed into the game with an elegance I have not seen outside of games with angry geese.

Each song perfectly fit the mood of the time, or the actions in the game, so much so that they are fundamentally mixed into the experience, on a technical, emotional, narrative, and experiential level. When Stacey stops to introduce a song, it pulls you into the moment because you can feel that the moment is special. In a way, Stacey is bearing their soul to you, because music is such a personal part of a person’s life and character. There were some songs I knew intimately, some songs I was familiar with, and some that were complete mysteries to me, but all of them worked. Indeed, there was at least one choice that when it played, I knew immediately, there could have been no other song than this for that moment.

Narrative

From a narrative perspective, Mixtape is a concise look at three people’s lives as they have interwoven with each other on the cusp of it all unravelling. This creates an interesting tension throughout the game as you know that juxtaposition will rend apart at some time, and it does. It helps that you do care for the three leads quite quickly because they all sit in the archetypes of this literature, while also being unique spins on what has come before. So, there is that familiarity there, but not so much that you can map the entire game’s story out in the first five minutes. It is also quite a tight narrative, with you being able to easily play it in one session. Indeed, I would recommend that you do. It took me about three hours to get to the end credits, but your time might vary depending on how much of the supporting notes you engage with, or how many rocks you skim.   

One of the main narrative devices that the game explores is the ripple of memory that wells up during these moments of transition. That moment when your older sister gives you a map to a treasure, and you bond over the journey. You keep wanting to look back, because that is where it is safe. The future might be full of unknowns, and not fun times in a broken-down dinosaur park, but it is also full of promise. I liked that the narrative acknowledges with a wink that there are clearly unreliable narrators going on here. But that unreliability is not born out of malice, but more the rose-tinted glasses we all wear when reminiscing about the past.   

Presentation

For an Australian video game company, I think they did a stellar job of bringing the world of the Pacific Northwest to life. There is a moment right at the start of the game where you skate through some autumn leaves, and can I say that it took my breath away. I have seen it mentioned that the animation style has taken some cues from the Into the Spider-Verse series, and I can both see it and feel that this was an inspired choice. One of the reasons that they used that kind of animation was to show the flow of swinging on a spider’s web through the trees/city. Here, they use it to show that same sort of flow, but through the medium of skateboards, shopping trolleys, and fireworks, to name but a few.

That quality of presentation can also be seen in the design of the characters and the world. There are times when you go into a character’s bedroom, and you can feel you are looking at a set. That someone has curated things that look like they should belong. But when each of the three leads went into their rooms, it felt like I was entering a private space. They are full of contrasts and small quirks, and more so, they feel like lived spaces. It is that attention to detail in the presentation and design that you see throughout the game, and what helps connect you to this world.   

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Mixtape? Absolutely. What a charming, joyous game, that made me ponder and think about my own life and the times I have reached one of those life-cliffs. The characters are interesting, the story fits, and the world is a delight. Also, I saw you snuck that Rage reference in there, and I appreciate you for it. Have you played Mixtape? Let us know what you thought in the comments below. 

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Feel free to share this review on social media and check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the staff of Mixtape
Game Direction – Johnny Galvatron
Story – Johnny Galvatron
Technical Director – Roman Maksymyschyn
Beethoven & Dinosaur Staff – Lauren Adassovsky, Arden Beckwith, Justin Blackwell, Ann-Marie Denham, Geordie Hall, Mariska Harasymiw, Michael McCusker, Lily Pagalis-Jackson, Joe Toole, Harry Truman, & Dean “Woody” Woodward
Voice Acting – Bella DeLong, Max Korman, Jessica Ma, JB Tadena, Monique Thomas, Tessa Stokes, Ally Dixon, Jenn Lyon, Cissy Jones, & Piotr Michael
Music – Josh Abrahams
Developer – Beethoven & Dinosaur
Publisher – Annapurna Interactive