As author Nick Hornby once wrote in his seminal novel ‘High Fidelity’: “Making a tape is like writing a letter – there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again…” and I think that same logic can be applied to the making of a video game too. There are a hell of a lot of rules, according to Hornby.
It’s this ‘building a mixtape’ ideology that Mixtape, as it suggests, adheres to most. This new narrative adventure from Beethoven & Dinosaur has crafted a compilation of experiences, some extravagantly theatrical, some grounded. Some are calm and some are complex. They’re tasters of a greater whole; delicious vol-au-vents of emotion, love, loss, rebellion – and much like a traditional mixtape, the game plays out like a collection of lived memory that a loved one has painstakingly crafted for you to experience the way they did.
That, and it’s honestly f**kin’ rad, man.
Mixtape wastes no energy on preamble, instead presenting an magical, interactive introduction that shows our three main characters careening down a sunset-soaked highway to ‘That’s Good’, by Devo.
To set the scene – it’s the trio of friends’ last night together before Stacey Rockford, Mixtape’s lead protagonist, jets off to New York to pursue her dreams of an illustrious career in the music business. The plan for the evening is laid out like a great heist, culminating in attending a teenage beach party, but the stakes are just as high as any bank robbery through the hazy lens of three teenagers celebrating their last night of life as they know it.
Each sequence in Mixtape plays out to a carefully selected track – some you’ve heard before, some you definitely haven’t – but it’s the introduction to each musical entry braised by Stacey Rockford’s dorky, fourth-wall explanations that makes them truly special.
Rockford is brooding, malevolent and snarky. She’s youth incarnate – ambitious and full of hope for her future, and equally brimming with dismay for her sleepy backwater town of Blue Moon Lagoon, or “Big Suck” as its colloquially named by the three friends.
She’s extremely passionate and endlessly knowledgeable about music of all kinds – obscure and pretentious – but undeniably charming in her delivery. Her character oozes enthusiasm that’ll feel relatable to music fans, from the big songs that make her titular mixtape to passing comments about analogue music production and certain stereos to the (stellar) opinion that Portishead’s debut album is a triumph. It’s a love letter from Stacey to you – often directly into camera – about the experiences we have and the way we remember them.
Mixtape’s gameplay is made up of a series of light interactive experiences that allow you to focus on the narrative at hand. The core story plays out across different locations with thematic soundtracks, and from these spots, you’ll peek into Stacey’s past memories, all of the decisions and debauchery that brought them through their formative teenage years and up to this very night.
In one memory, you’ll headbang on a drive to Silverchair by pressing buttons along to the beat, and in another, you’ll pose in a photo booth and click the shutter while Harper’s Bizarre plays alongside. Some sections are designed to carry you along a narrative beat, like a high-octane sequence that follows the trio careening down a highway in a shopping trolley while Rainbow’s ‘Sensitive to Light’ is blasting (a song I never thought I’d hear in a video game).
A personal highlight for me was hitting baseballs along to one of my personal all-time favourite songs (which I won’t spoil), introduced by a borderline pompous Stacey Rockford monologue that could rival my own. The inclusion of this song specifically punctuates a deeply personal experience – while these might not be life-changing songs for you – most of us have songs that can transport us back to a time and place in an extremely visceral way, and Mixtape captures that masterfully.
Other sections are longer, and hand some light exploration over to players. One delightful sequence takes you on one special night through an abandoned dinosaur park, where the trio rides into a hopeful sunset on the back of a giant sauropod, dreaming up future plans and mapping out the rest of their lives. It’s this scene that particularly accentuates what Mixtape is about: A dreamlike, melancholy snapshot of how it feels to be young, and what it means to have to grow up.
Bottling that notion is what makes Mixtape feel truly special. It’s a spectacle, that plays out like a film rather than a traditional video game, operatic in parts and solemn in others, but it doesn’t lose sight of actually being interactive. There’s something for you to do in almost every sequence, be it steering a skateboard down a hill, choosing flavors at the slushy machine, or manually wrapping two wet tongues around each other in a kissing mini-game I never want to think about again in my life. Every mechanic you encounter feels lovingly crafted specifically for the moment it accompanies, making you a part of these vignettes, rather than just a spectator. It’s a joyful, magical celebration of music like nothing I’ve ever seen, and a gorgeous, ethereal experience that needs to be seen to be truly appreciated.
There are indeed, a lot of rules to making a Mixtape, but maybe, for one night, wouldn’t it be better to make your own?
Devo was right – everybody wants a good thing too, and you can have it, when Mixtape launches today, available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and Xbox Cloud as an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and playable with Xbox Game Pass.
Mixtape
Annapurna Interactive
On their last night together, three friends embark on one final adventure. Play through a mixtape of memories, set to the soundtrack of a generation.
En route to their final party together, a perfectly curated playlist draws three friends into dreamlike reenactments of their formative memories. Experience a variety of narrative vignettes exploring the pivotal moments that shaped them. Players will immerse themselves in the teenage wasteland by playing through a mixtape of joyful gameplay, from skateboarding and flying to taking photos after hours at an abandoned theme park, hitting baseballs, and putting on a fireworks show from the backseat of a car. It’s the greatest hits of the teenage experience, from the first kiss to the last dance.
From Beethoven & Dinosaur, developers of BAFTA award-winning game The Artful Escape, Mixtape draws inspiration from classic coming-of-age movies, bringing together nostalgic aimlessness, mischief, music, the highs and lows of adolescence, and the bittersweet feelings brought about by growth, transformation, and moving on.
Featuring music from DEVO, Roxy Music, Lush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, the Cure and many more.
Skate. Party. Avoid the law.
Hang out. Sneak out. Make out.
