A wonderful coming-of-age story told through the eyes of three teenagers and wrapped in a killer soundtrack.
What Is It? Mixtape is a 2026 adventure game developed by Beethoven & Dinosaur and published by Annapurna. The coming-of-age story follows a group of three teenage friends in the mid-late ‘90s as they set out to achieve the perfect last day before they head out in separate directions to start their lives. The gameplay elements here are sparse, but the story it tells and the music that ties it all together are worth your time.
You play as Stacy Rockford, the unofficial leader of the group of California teens and aspiring professional music supervisor. Stacy always has the perfect song for the occasion and her playlist for the day’s events mirrors the plan she has mapped out to make sure the group has fun/booze and arrives at the biggest party of the summer at exactly 9:45PM. Van Slater is your lifelong friend who is into making music and riding the waves of the vibes as they come. Cassandra Morino is a former star athlete who joined your group a few years ago as a means of lashing out against her overly strict parents.
The events of the game take place across a single day, with some flashbacks thrown in. Early the next morning, Stacy is heading to New York to chase her dream, and her sister, while Slater and Cassandra embark on the California road trip the three had been planning for years. The fact that Stacy isn’t going is a major source of tension as Stacy exposes on a few occasions throughout the fourth-wall breaking game.
The game plays out in small chapters, each of which is soundtracked by a song that Stacy will explain along the way. You will rummage through each of the character’s rooms, optionally picking up various items to learn more about the friends and their relationship. The “advance the story” items will be marked with a glowing yellow orb, so you know when you’re potentially ending your chance to see the optional bits. The most game-like actions you will do generally come between these chapters as you skate down the town’s streets doing tricks on your way from one house to another, soar through the sky in open fields, or run, jump, and slide through obstacles. None of these last more than two or three minutes and none are actually failable.
The game throws in a few other activities along the way, often during flashbacks, such as using a slingshot, painting a door, and other small, miscellaneous tasks. These sections are all fun, but I want to be clear that they are as much “game” as Mixtape features. This is, first and foremost, a story, you just happen to get to control some small pieces of it along the way.
The game runs three or four hours, there are no branching paths or decisions to be made along the way. The visual style is unique with the almost stop-motion animation really standing out. I was using the screen capture button a lot during my playthrough as one scene after another jumped off of the screen.
The Best Part: The music. Each section of the game is marked by a new song, which Stacy will introduce, and sets the tone for whatever is happening on screen. The songs are mostly deep cuts spanning the ’60s through the ’90s. Coming from a fairly large music nerd; I hadn’t heard of most of the songs in this game, and there were definitely a few artists I’d never listened to before. The game doubles down on the music aspect by making music a primary personality trait of Stacy. The characters discuss and joke about “the perfect song for the moment” throughout. If the idea of music bringing back very specific memories has ever resonated with you, you will probably enjoy how it is used, and discussed, in Mixtape.
The Worst Part: The three main characters get uneven treatment as far as filling out their stories. Cassandra, the daughter of overbearing parents including a local police officer, probably gets the most clear set of circumstances which she is reacting to throughout the game. Stacy’s motivations are clear but her backstory is mostly left in the dark. Then there’s Slater, poor Slater. He gets the least amount of story and doesn’t actually do much of anything throughout. All of this is fine and makes total sense given the short runtime of the game, but this is definitely a case where the game left me wanting to know more about the characters.
The Verdict: I had a great time experiencing Mixtape. The moderate debauchery that the characters partake in doesn’t resonate with my personal experience, but the “last hoorah of high school” is a popular trope for a reason. Whether you were trying to plan the perfect last party or simply playing videogames at home, the feeling of realizing everything you’ve known is about to change significantly is a common rite-of-passage. Even for the Slater’s of the world who genuinely just want to stay in their hometown, find a low stress job, and enjoy life, seeing everything around you changing is an experience.
The fact that Mixtape tightly wraps this common coming-of-age theme in music speaks to me in ways that the “doing crime” portions did not. I was not trying to soundtrack every moment of life like Stacy does, but I have vivid memories of purchasing CDs, going to shows, listening to albums, and so on from my younger days. Music has been a constant throughout the vast majority of my life, so when I heard a Smashing Pumpkins deep cut off of the first CD I ever bought with my own money during the trailer for Mixtape, that told me all I needed to know.
Mixtape is absolutely not for everyone. I hesitate to call anything in this a “game.” The things you actually do here are more like mini-activities. It is fun to try to hit homeruns with a super simple baseball portion or shoot bottles with a slingshot, but these are all just bridges to the next story beats Mixtape has to drop.
If you understand the limitations of what Mixtape isn’t, and are at all interested in what Mixtape is, this is one of the easiest recommendations I can make.
How to Play: Xbox Series*, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, PC
*console played on for this review
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