Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
Nostalgia isn’t memories, it’s feelings; emotions connected to life’s milestones eternally more resonant than the blunt reality of events. That’s especially true for the brief, almost liminal space between finishing school and stepping into adulthood — and a sensation that Mixtape captures perfectly.
Set in the late ‘90s, it charts the friendship between three teenagers on the eve of a final party. Music-obsessed protagonist Stacy Rockford knows the perfect song for any occasion, creative genius Van Slater is two decades late for true hippy status, while Cassandra Morino is a wannabe rebel trapped by her authoritarian parents’ suburban perfectionism. If those archetypes sound suspiciously familiar, it’s because Mixtape is unashamedly inspired by John Hughes’ filmography. It’s not a straight cover though, also sampling Kevin Smith’s Mallrats and Allan Moyles’ (vastly underrated) Empire Records for a pitch-perfect vibe of disaffected youth.
This is about feelings though, not cold mechanics, and there Mixtape utterly succeeds.
Told over a single day, the story sees the trio ostensibly hunting booze for the rager, but really they’re dragging out their final night before the world intrudes. Trinkets scattered about bedrooms — a photo here, a trophy there — spark memories, each one a playable recollection of their time together, and it’s with these that Mixtape goes off on some Bueller-esque whimsical tangents.
These sequences are brief but gloriously weird: an interactive awkward first kiss, controlling both tongues; guiding a stoned Van around as the camera warps; stomping through an abandoned theme park like a kaiju. They’re often bizarre, sometimes trippy, but all evoke a beautifully misspent youth.
Every beat is set to a track on Rockford’s painstakingly curated setlist, each introduced to the camera with an explanation of its importance. Appropriately, it’s filled with achingly cool period hits, such as Lush’s ‘Monochrome’ and The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Love’, but travels back through New Wave delights like Devo’s ‘That’s Good’, or the extremely niche, borderline hipsterish inclusion of Harpers Bazaar’s ‘Witchi Tai To’. Despite Rockford’s High Fidelity-worthy cooler-than-thou musical tastes, every song fits each scene perfectly, reframing even Stan Bush’s brilliantly cheesy ‘The Touch’ (from 1986’s Transformers: The Movie) into a laser-targeted attack on the feels.
Mixtape does stumble in places. Each of those playable memories feels little more than a Warioware microgame, while the visuals — a pseudo-stop motion evocative of Into The Spider-Verse — work beautifully for those bespoke experiences, but the deliberately low frame rate makes controlling Rockford in-between feel like manoeuvring a juddering marionette.
This is about feelings though, not cold mechanics, and there Mixtape utterly succeeds. Coming-of-age outings are rare in gaming, but this pulls it off with barely a dud note. Mixtape is a short, almost dreamlike experience that plays like a memory you wish you had.
