Mixtape Review

The Decade is the 90’s. The millennium is looming, the internet is still a series of dial up internet noises and your entire identity is contained within a plastic cassette or the new craze a CD Player. This is the world of Mixtape, the latest sensory odyssey from Beethoven & Dinosaur and has launched on Gamepass. After their previous project of The Artful Escape, the studio has traded cosmic land for the grit and grime of suburban teenage rebellion.

Mixtape is an ambitious and a polarising piece of art. It is a game that is currently setting social media ablaze not because of bugs or broken promises as of recent, but because it challenges the very definition of what a “game” should be. It is a playable core memory, a montage or highlight reel of youth that is as breathtakingly gorgeous as it is mechanically thin. The game is more like a visual novel with a few actions here and there rather than something similar to a Life is Strange or a Wolf Among Us that offers a bit more direction and implication from choice.

Mostly the narrative framework of Mixtape is enjoyable. Three best friends Stacey, Van Slater, and Cassandra are on a final, aimless drive through their hometown on the night of their high school graduation. The usual tropes are here which is cliché of one last party and painting the town red in traditional American graduation style in their last blaze of glory before disbanding and doing their own things and learning how tough it is to go through emotions and have a support unit of friendship before it is gone.

The premise of Mixtape is that each track represents a moment in their memories, something that shapes them or just a song that suits something in that moment. Music is subjective, tastes are subjective and can be seen as a bit too hardcore for someone who even has a passion for music. However, one thing for isure the way the songs are curated to the scenes have had some market research done to them as you get this little snapshot of a fourth wall break leading up to the song with a little synopsis itself before going back into the action and why it’s relevant to the scene.

It is impossible to discuss Mixtape without its soundtrack as that’s the main selling factor. This is a licensed library of tunes complied into every major milestone in the game with some big hitters such as The Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division and Iggy Pop. These songs aren’t just in the background they are the level design, whatever plays the world reacts. Things shift and change to suit the moment and usually involved a reaction to certain lyrics or change in energy you feel in music.

Although the lack of gameplay and direction is apparent at times, let’s be clear visually it’s an interesting spin with the art style is a “stepped” animation technique that mimics the look of stop-motion or claymation, but with a high fidelity, analogue texture. It feels like someone took a 16mm film reel which ties into the whole living in the 90’s trope. The world isn’t “realistic” in the traditional sense it’s emotionally realistic and charged. It captures how we remember things: distorted, vibrant, and focused on the small details or living a scenario differently in our heads and enjoying euphoria in our childhood vicariously through music.

This is where the “ticking time bomb” on social media resides. If you go into Mixtape expecting a long length piece of cinema, you will be disappointed. The gameplay consists of micro interactions which has created the question of what is the fine line between game and visual novel and can feel very linear to the point you don’t need to press a button. There is a valid critique here of the game relies heavily on the player’s own nostalgia to fill in the gaps. If you didn’t grow up in the 90s, or if you don’t care for post-punk and grunge, the emotional hook might not land.

These moments are creative, but they are undeniably thin in structure. There is no failing in Mixtape. You cannot lose. You are essentially a passenger on a highly directed emotional tour for a couple of hours. To some, this is a revolutionary way to tell a story. To others particularly the louder corners of the gaming community it’s Press A sim with a big budget for music licensing.

Despite the mechanical lightness, Mixtape resonates with a certain crowd because it is profoundly human. The three protagonists aren’t archetypes they are messy. They make mistakes, they are accidentally mean to each other, and they are terrified of the “real world” that starts tomorrow. We have all be through this moment one point in life some in the 90’s like me, others generations before or after me but the thought of the unknown has always existed and many have used music as a coping mechanism to get through it. The game captures the nostalgia of youth, that strange feeling of it being doomsday because you have the fear of missing out whilst creating the soundtrack to their life.

Mixtape is a game that prioritises emotional resonance over complexity. If you embrace it as an interactive album, a piece of digital art designed to be felt rather than played it reveals itself as a genuine heartfelt story. It’s short and occasionally a bit full of itself just like we all was when was seventeen. Don’t play it for the modern way of gaming, play it to remember the person you used to be and consume it differently.