I’ve loved music even before I even had a concept of it. My mom always enjoys telling people how my dad would put speakers on each side of her belly to make me listen to his favorite songs, translating my kicks as signs of approval. I still have a vivid memory of sitting on his lap a few years later while watching the music video for “Chop Suey” by System of a Down.
It’s no understatement that music has been formative for me throughout my whole life, and has shaped me into the person I am today. I’ve always been obsessed with the power that songs can carry, acting as time capsules to moments, people, places, feelings. I remember what I was listening to when I had my first kiss, and when I lost a family member for the first time. Some songs can teleport me to moments and places in an instant, despite being thousands of miles or a decade away from them.
As such, I have quite a bit of respect for what developer Beethoven & Dinosaur, previously of The Artful Escape fame, is doing with Mixtape. The story-driven adventure is centered around a group of teenagers having one last function together. The eventful day is told across a curated music playlist by one of the characters, which includes licensed tracks from Devo, Joy Division, The Cure, and many more.
During a hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest, I played the first 20 minutes or so of the game. Up to that point, the structure was heavily tied to the mixtape motif, told through the lens of films in the vein of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with the main character speaking to the camera and sharing unsolicited backstory exposition before a song played. The tone, as well as the use of real-life imagery and footage all seem to recall those influences to the dot.
Mixtape isn’t a visual novel, but there isn’t much of a game involved. Rather, such as the memories that songs and conversations spark in the group, you get snippets in the form of mini games or short sequences related to certain key moments of their lives. I strolled around around suburban streets on skateboards while yelling “car!” every 15 seconds, completed a button sequence to give someone a secret handshake, and carried a drunk friend inside a shopping cart while the police chased us after breaking into a seemingly illegal party. You know, average Tuesday for a teenager.
It’s all a great encapsulation of how media has portrayed the perils and romanticism of teenage life for decades, probably to a fault. As someone from Argentina, this portrayal in films and TV shows have always seemed alien to me. It wasn’t until the past few years that I actually set foot in different cities of the United States, getting to transit through New York’s different boroughs or the tranquil streets of the suburbs with actual Halloween decorations. Even iconography like red plastic cups at party felt surreal to see in person.
The writing in Mixtape caters to the nostalgia evoked by the songs chosen, but my time with it was too short to know exactly which direction the developers are taking with the overall story. At times, the teenagers sounded quite clichéd, seemingly more concerned in sounding like characters in a movie than actual teenagers. Sequences like a first kiss in which you have to control the physics of both tongues, however, gave me an indication that the game might be willing to not take itself too seriously, acknowledging its influences and making fun of tropes instead.
If you’re familiar with the likes of Life is Strange, Oxenfree, and this year’s Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, Mixtape will feel instantly familiar. Stepping into the main character’s room gave me a deja vu, as well as seeing her walking with her headphones on while a licensed track played in the background.
Mixtape will be the ideal game for a very specific audience – those who live and breathe music on an encyclopedic level, or folks who reminiscence of bygone eras where technology was cool and there were no algorithms dictating our lives. A time in which curating a playlist, and thus your own life, was one of the meaningful things you could do.
