Mixtape (2026)

You may have heard that the music-themed coming-of-age game Mixtape is “barely a game”, a “glorified cutscene”, and things like this, but those who engage in good faith may be surprised to find that the game’s more interactive sections are really what elevates it. They don’t demand mastery, and they result in almost no consequences once they’re over, but stepping into characters’ shoes for these brief asides and trying to do what the game asks of you is a core part of its storytelling.

That’s not to say that all of the minigames and adventure segments in this game are hits, as for every memorably fun or otherwise engaging one, there’s also one that falls a bit flat. And a lot of the interactivity is unfortunately just the style where you slowly walk around a room interacting with stuff so characters can remark on it to remember stuff, a style that has become stale over the years.

But whether these more interactive moments add a little personality and texture to the experience, embellish and heighten the emotions of characters’ memories with elaborate fantasy and action, leave a little cosmetic impact to call back to later, or just let you enjoy a moment or a place with a bit of simple player expression, the game as a narrative experience wouldn’t be the same without them or the fact that I was controlling them myself.

While I’ll defend the game along these grounds in principle, it still doesn’t mean people have to like it, because at the end of the day the story being told does always go back to normal cutscenes and plot and things which are not all great either. In fact I’d say it has certain really good sections, and never gets bad, but overall is not really something that hugely entertained or moved me.

It took some time to even get into it since the early goings were a bit unimpressive with such a standard kind of coming-of-age setup (it’s the end of high school and we need some freaking booze for this last party man) and the often forced-feeling fourth wall breaks and music references of its “mixtape” framing device. And the main character is not one I particularly liked, possibly the worst offender of the game’s writing occasionally feeling a bit cringe and not “real” enough, but luckily her friends get a lot of focus and were a lot more interesting and fun.

It’s a solid game in the sense that I was reasonably entertained by the story as a whole, found a bunch of parts of it relatively memorable, and thought it was pretty well presented. It even does some things a few times in its editing that I think are underutilized in this kind of game, like a couple minigames with conversations in the background where it will cut away from the “gameplay” and back occasionally in a way that really helps it feel like a cohesive scene rather than cutscene -> gameplay -> cutscene. At the end of the day, it’s not really great for me but shows some promise for future stylish and entertaining interactive stories that this studio could put together.

Yes, at best this qualifies as a visual album. No, that is not even remotely a bad thing.

Every couple of weeks (at this point, days, if we're being honest), the internet feels the need to remind us all just how much of a mistake it was. Beethoven and Dinosaur's cinematic ode to John Hughes and ’90s romanticism seems to be the newest in a long line of undeserved and, above all else, unnecessary victims. What frustrates me the most is that the same dumb fucks who whine over the homogeneity of modern AAA gaming (they would never use a word that big) are the ones more than willing to sacrifice any developer who even attempts something new at the altar of masculine rage. Mixtape isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admit it. It's a poorly structured nostalgia trip whose characters navel‑gaze so hard that at times their dialogue is indistinguishable from slam poetry. And yet… it is also an absolute fucking masterpiece.

I look around me and I get the sense most people forgot what it was like being a teenager. I've never been able to, because unresolved trauma has this way of rippling through your life unpredictably. I can string every inch of my identity to specific moments in high school, every part of me built brick by bloody brick of cringe, regret, and a staggering amount of angst—but also love, hope, and a completely unfounded faith in self. Teenage‑hood is weird, imprecise, naïve by design. It's ambitious to the point of being nonsensical, and irrational to the point of being dangerous. Teenagers manage to be confident about their place in the world while simultaneously acknowledging that they've barely been in it—and that psychological self‑hack is the only reason any of us at that age mustered up the courage to keep doing this thing that so many failed at before we came along. Youth isn't supposed to make sense; by definition it exists in rebellion to entropy itself.

So I look at this over‑edited anthology of anecdotes about a headstrong girl and her group of alcohol‑addled misfit friends, treating their quest to get to a party on their last night together like it's life or death… I look at their moments of shared bliss captured through perfectly scored surrealism… I look at this game's attempts to bottle the deep complexity of platonic love, the crushing contradictions inherent in any relationship… I look at its completely inaccurate representation of the ’90s and think… even though these places, these people, these moments are completely foreign to me… I remember that feeling.

Bravo.

Always awesome to read about what a game developer considers a "successful launch". Got a big smile on my face when I read (GameInformer) about Johnny Galvatron and the team over at Beethoven & Dinosaur and what "success" meant to them. Ignoring all the negative noise this game generated, I'm very glad they had their successful launch :).

The writing is impeccable and brings me back to a time and place that technically didn't exist, but feels like it did. The dialogue is cringeworthy and often insufferable, but yeah, that's the point! I wanted to hate every character for their self-important diatribes and the way they defined their entire existence by the media they consumed, then remembered oh no, that's just me in high school. I was self-important! I'd tell anyone who would listen how much better Arcade Fire is than Nickelback or whatever. I'd never shut the fuck up and this is the first piece of media that really captured the essence for me.

These story-heavy narrative games never hook me, and while everything you've heard about the presentation is true (it's stunning!), it's supported by great gameplay. I'm amazed how many different mechanics from toilet papering to rock skipping are so satisfying to use during every gameplay sequence.

An absolute delight I can't wait for whatever they get up to next.

Mixtape (Xbox SS) - Una aventura gráfica muy fresquita que por algún motivo ha levantado un debate en torno a lo que es un videojuego en el año de nuestro señor 2026. Me ha gustado mucho, me ha emocionado en algún momento y creo que tampoco soy el público objetivo como tal. Rebosa amor por la música.

Yessss... I finally got the Platinum trophy for Mixtape 😭! To any trophy/achievement hunters out there trying to go for the "Front to Back" achievement where you have to "Find everything in the bedrooms and all unique conversations", and you swear you've clicked on everything using chapter select - I HIGHLY recommend using chapter select and start the game from the very beginning and immediately click on Rockford's family portrait on the wall when you get to her house. I know I've clicked on it before, but for some reason only now did it just pop.

This game though.... can we please normalize the ability to skip cutscenes when you've finished the game lol

Finished this game with my partner last night, and honestly we do not feel this game deserves all the negative hate it has gotten recently.

While it's true that this game is probably not for everyone depending on your views, background, history, and threshold of handling the teenage angsty experience - there's no denying that this game has had a lot of passion placed behind it by the developers.

A beautiful aesthetic, cool moment to moment ideas, great music selection of not too well known songs - Mixtape is definitely overdramatized, and overloaded with teenage angst buuut it's still entertaining nonetheless. And with a pricetag of $20 for a few hours of gameplay... I mean... still cheaper than going to the movies lol.

I have no idea why the internet lost its collective mind over this game. You've got one side frothing at the mouth giving it 10/10s and saying it's game of the year which would be silly almost any year but is particularly laughable in a year where we've already gotten RE9, Pragmata, and Saros.

Then you've got people trying to end people's careers over saying anything even mildly positive about the game and treating it as a battle ground for a ideological war.

Like, it's fine? It has a great licensed soundtrack, gorgeous visuals, fantastic cinematography, almost no gameplay, and cringe, clunky writing and characters that don't at all represent teens in the 90s. It's 90s teens by way of a Guardians of the Galaxy writing room, which is not only completely performative and inaccurate to those of us who are old enough to know better, but kind of insufferable.

It's a well made but poorly written movie type game that I'm glad I played just to look at it and listen to it. Kinda reminded me of FLCL where the anime would stop for a minute just to basically become a music video with cool fantastical visuals.

The best/worst thing about it is I now wish for a bully-esque game that looks like this and will probably never get it.

Mixtape is an adventure game by definition, but plays more like a walking simulator or interactive story. There's no choices in dialogue or real puzzles per se. It's essentially a collection of mini games or set pieces telling the story of a group of friends on their final night together before one moves away. Our main character is a huge music nerd and is all about every moment of life having the perfect song in the moment to the soundtrack of their life. She'll fourth wall break to introduce the audience to the song and often given a quick history quip about it, before the song kicks in and our gameplay resumes. Looking through the soundtrack, almost anyone is guaranteed to at least have heard of an artist or two within the list but what is really cool is they may not recognize the songs. Most of the songs here are pretty deep cuts, rarely using an artists more popular hits. Genres are even pretty wide, and especially the era or decade. You'll hear an older blues song, to smashing pumpkins, an Iggy Pop song where he collaborated with B52's.

The story heavily focuses on capturing that nostalgia of growing up in the 80s or 90s, and how we felt in those moments. At one point you're on essentially a treasure hunt with friends and need to cross a field. The song kicks in, you all start running, then start gliding, eventually you can "jump" but fly/glide through the air over a long distance. It's hard to explain in words, but it makes you think and feel what your imagination does in those moments you felt growing up. The game is so good at doing this and many times I found myself just smiling remembering similar times I had growing up.

The game is incredibly short, being able to finish in probably 4 hours even with taking your time. I can't imagine there being much replay value here, but if you like music and grew up in the 80s or 90s I'd almost consider this a must play. It was such a fun adventure to experience, with well thought out characters who felt like real friends you may have had in the past or people you absolutely knew in school.

I think Mixtape's biggest sin was masquerading as an 'indie darling' while having Annapurna's backing and the spectacle of creator/backer kits they had (we're talking PRAGMATA levels of marketing for influencers/creators), not to mention the ridiculous amount of licensed music in a videogame that indie struggle to get and the production value is off the roof.

And its other, biggest, sin is being unapologetically the developer/writer's own music views embellished on a teenager whose tastes would have been dramatically plied by the 90s commercial music airing in that year.

I think the line "he's a meathead, use him and dump him" upon Cassandra saying he was looking at a boy whose musical tastes encompassed Pearl Jam or Green Day says most of what I actually mean with the phrase above.

Probably won't play this one til it goes on sale, I've very little nostalgia for the harrowing, ceaseless depression of my high school years. Music was always a bright point for me back then, though, so Mixtape's core conceit of an all-encompassing, 22-track high school playlist is fun to think about. By consulting the ancient texts (i.e. Last.fm) I can guess that my own would look something like this:

• My Chinchilla - Cub
• Me Robaron Mi Runa Mula - Juaneco y Su Combo
• Knights - Crystal Castles
• Not Going Anywhere - Keren Ann
• Crayon - Caribou
• Indestructible Life - Old Time Relijun
• 17 Years - Ratatat
• Gathering Allies - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
• Rain in Numbers - Beach House
• Terrorist - Heavens to Betsy
• Team Zissou - Seu Jorge
• Mr. Tough - Yo La Tengo
• Cooper - Deerhoof
• Distortions - Clinic
• Pin - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Adventure - Be Your Own Pet
• Bridges and Balloons - Joanna Newsom
• Blind - Hercules and Love Affair
• 50s Parking - Tapes 'n Tapes
• The Good That Won't Come Out - Rilo Kiley
• Aluminum - Mahjongg
• PS - The Books

For maximum effect you'd have to play this on an old Walkman MP3 player, dunno where I'd be without this champion:

Mixtape is... something. It's a videogame published by Annapurna Interactive and it goes over a classic coming of age Americana tale.

I don't know where to start so I will say something to preface this review: I am European, in my 30s and with a radically diverse type of experience of life than what Mixtape assumes I could possibly relate to. I have consumed enough coming of age teenager flicks in my time, made by Americans, to know the trope to a T and know some of them can resonate despite being literal landmasses away.

Mixtape isn't like that.

Mixtape was made with the intent to resonate with a very specific audience that just misses the landmark with me: extremely nostalgic players, born or not in the 80s or 90s. The ones that were born in that age are desperately clutching into the ropes of their memories of an easier time and the ones that weren't clutch the wires of a nostalgia they have vicariously lived through Tiktoks and memes. All of them American and with a life out from the larger city areas.

I cannot comment on the veracity of what it displays: I have no love-lost for the white picket fence American dream, where a home is a 2-story independent house and a backyard. I have no nostalgia for long days spent at a friend's place simply because we were too far apart and cars were only a vague suggestion until you were 18. Skating became prominent only in the early 2000s and slowly rose in popularity when Tony Hawk's Pro Skater started being released and his face was on MTV.

But let's talk about the game.

Mixtape is a something more akin to a movie rather than a game (it is getting a theatrical release, after all) and masquerades as "yet another indie darling" whilst being heavily backed by Annapurna Interactive, having enough copyrighted music licensed to make a Hollywood production tremble in its boots and enough people working on it to make it a visually enjoyable experience.

It's a game that is visually gorgeous but falters at a closer look to its character (which all eerily look very same-y despite all being different people) and employs the choice of rendering character movement at 30fps while the rest of the game smoothly runs at 60fps. While it isn't too bad and it's visually somewhat interesting, it kind of makes some of the segments look extremely goofy (like the limited movement in the photograph minigame where Stacy and Slater look like stiff pieces of wood or the final running sequences) and takes the wind out of you.

The story is your extremely generic Americana coming-of-age story in which Stacy has to move away from the placid neighborhood she, Slater and Cassandra have lived all their lives. This creates the classical rift and classic 'dive into older memories' on which the entire game relies on as you trudge along to go to this last big party.

The minigames aren't that interesting despite being the core experience of the game and they simply happen as you go on by, leaving nothing to write home if not a couple of scenes - you can engage with them in earnest or simply let them happen and do the minimum amount of effort.

The game doesn't really incentivize you to do "well" or "participate" in the few interactive element if not to carry on the narrative at large and I think that's my biggest disconnect (aside from the game obviously not being made for me): Annapurna Interactive has published amazing games under the "walking simulator" umbrella so I will compare Mixtape to a story that is of equal interactivity (if not less than Mixtape's) - What Remains of Edith Finch.

What Remains of Edith Finch invites you to engage with the game's interactivity and the swathes between one story and another are filled to the brim with memories from the perspective of Edith. Every family member has a minigame associated with them that asks you to engage with it to understand the story, to feel what the character is going through. Mixtape renders you a bystander by not even daring to ask you to engage with its interactivity, whether you do something or not, you are going to progress; the character's quirks will happen whether or not you are pressing the button (such as flipping the bird in multiple occasions, exploding things with your mind in a comical skateboarding sequence that has no real logic applied to it) so that you don't even have to try and put yourself in Stacy Rockford's shoes. You are a bystander, watching a movie of three teenagers going through something you'd find on a classic coming-of-age movie.

I also heavily dislike Stacy Rockford. She feels like the vague stand-in for the game's developer (Johnny Galvatron, of "The Galvatrons" fame) and his own tastes rather than a teen whose tastes are a bit more niche (that I can point out because I used to be heavily into 70s and 80s music in the mid-2000s) and that is heavily remarked by the insufferable spiels she gives every time a new song is being played.

All in all, Mixtape is probably something that is not made for me and will never appeal to me despite deeply enjoying games with a fluent narrative and limited gameplay. But that is entirely because I am not Mixtape's primary audience.

I fully appreciate the vibe and audience who jam with its sensibility. I'm sure its wonderful. Truly.

However, I know its not for me. I would read my teenage journals if I wanted to revisit self doubt with with half a grip on mental health.

My Before Era wasn't filled with friends or cool tuques and ripped jeans. It was not knowing I had anxiety or even how how to spell it.