'Mixtape' Review: A Clever Bit of Nostalgia That's Light on Gameplay
Developed by Beethoven and Dinosaur, the team behind 2021’s The Artful Escape, Mixtape takes aim squarely at gamers who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. If you’re at all familiar with films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, you already have a pretty good idea of the vibe Mixtape is going for.
Set in an unnamed Northern California town, referred to only as “The Big Suck,” Mixtape follows three teenagers arriving at the end of their high school journey. You play as Rockford, a music-obsessed girl who has curated the perfect soundtrack for her final day together with best friends Slater, a stoner type reminiscent of the Dazed and Confused character of the same name, and Cassandra, a popular student with a rebellious side.
At the heart of the game’s overarching plot is a mix of the trio looking to track down liquor for that evening’s party and a building confrontation between Cassandra and Rockford, who has chosen to bail on a long-planned road trip to fly to New York City, hoping to catch on with a famous DJ and jumpstart her own music-based aspirations.
The story is told through a handful of hub areas (a bedroom, a cabin), where you interact with various objects to get additional details about the characters’ lives. Those tinged in yellow trigger flashback sequences that make up the bulk of the gameplay, such as it is. The flashbacks vary dramatically in terms of scope, with some, such as visiting an abandoned theme park, lasting 10-plus minutes, and others, like Rockford’s first kiss, barely registering.
Each moment, past or present, is paired with a song. The soundtrack is full of popular bands of that era, such as the Smashing Pumpkins, the Cure, Devo, and many more. For full disclosure, I knew precious few of the songs—my dad was always the music buff in the family, while I gravitated toward sports and video games—and I’m honestly still a bit salty that one of the only songs I did know (“This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan) is referenced as being part of Rockford’s soundtrack but not played for narrative reasons.
Despite that lack of familiarity, the songs are effective in setting the tone and teeing up whatever emotion the memory is meant to convey. Probably my favorite was “The Touch” by Stan Bush, which arrives during a flashback to Cassandra hitting home runs in softball practice. It was among the few sections I felt a direct connection to, having played baseball at both the Little League and high school levels throughout my childhood.
Stirring nostalgia is what Mixtape does best, and I don’t think it’s necessary to be a child of that time to feel it. Even if you never did most (or even any) of the stuff the characters are portrayed doing, odds are you’ll still relate to the feelings it conjures up and insert your own memories.
While the sounds and visuals deliver, the gameplay is an afterthought. Mixtape can’t even be called a collection of minigames, since plenty of sections are just interactive storytelling like when you toilet paper the principal’s house or skate down the street detonating cars and objects by flipping them off. You’ll skip stones, paint a door, take photos, rent movies, and other similarly mellow activities.
The characters and writing are mostly solid, though you’ll find occasional bits of dialogue that would’ve been out of place during the mid-1990s. There’s also that relentless level of cleverness that you only find in scripted environments. It never really bothered me, but there were times where I sat there acutely aware that real people don’t talk that way.
Final Score (7.5/10)
Mixtape is a difficult game to score. I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do, creating a largely enjoyable coming-of-age-style story, and I could absolutely see people more connected to its music enjoying the game on an entirely other level. At the same time, this is a video game, and during its roughly three-hour run time, the best it ever does with its gameplay is presenting something clever. Consider this a quintessential “your mileage may vary” title.