Not since Life Is Strange has a game evoked such a strong sense of teenage ennui, with a story of three young people on the brink of adulthood in the 1990s.
When video games attempt 90s nostalgia it usually involves mascot platformers and old school role-playing games, with very few of them attempting to portray the decade itself, rather than the games that were popular during it. But thanks to some excellent voice-acting, buckets of nostalgia, and an expertly curated tracklist, Mixtape manages to go deeper.
On the face of it, there’s not much of a premise here. Mixtape follows an afternoon in the lives of Stacey Rockford, Slater, and Cassandra, three teens who are about to move out of Blue Moon Lagoon, the small Californian town they grew up in.
As the protagonist, Rockford, puts it, it’s a milestone, and ‘this requires preparation.’ To that end, she’s curated a mixtape to provide a soundtrack to every moment of their last great adventure – an adventure which mostly involves reminiscing about the good old days and searching for enough booze to fuel one last, massive blowout at cool girl Camille Cole’s summer party rager.
This is not a game for hardcore shooter fans, but that’s not what devs Beethoven & Dinosaur (the brains behind 2021 game The Artful Escape) are going for. Game director Johnny Galvatron has described playing Mixtape as ‘sorta like channel surfing [old school] MTV at 3am,’ and that vibe definitely comes across here.
Instead of exploring the map – or exercising much agency at all, actually – Mixtape is made up of a series of vignettes and minigames that take place in the central trio’s bedrooms, their broken down, cottage-in-the-woods hideaway (ironically called The Ritz), and across the town of Blue Moon Lagoon where they live.
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If that sounds boring, it’s not. Each minigame is surprisingly fun and varied, and in turn takes players further into the world, deftly outlining each character’s backstory and the dynamics in their friendship group.
At the game’s very start, skateboarding down the hill into Blue Moon Lagoon as Rockford, Slater, and Cassandra exchange asides immediately evokes a very particular sense of time and place, while a following minigame, in which the player controls a pair of snogging teenage tongues, is simultaneously disgusting and hilarious.
These are kids caught on the brink of adulthood, but whose imaginations still have licence to run riot. At one point, a sprint through a field becomes a wonderful, gravity-defying flying sequence; in another, a teenage temper tantrum turns into a minigame where Rockford’s raised middle finger can explode everything from cars to billboards.
Almost all of these minigames are soundtracked by their own exclusive song, often explained to camera by Rockford, in one of many such asides that narrowly walks the line between charming and grating. That’s also true of the many cut scenes, which at times make Mixtape feel less like a game and more like watching an Eighties style coming of age film. As a result, the experience can sometimes feel overly slow.
It’s just as well, then, that the music is so good. Artists like Portishead, The Smashing Pumpkins, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and British shoegaze band Lush all feature – as do Joy Division, Iggy Pop, and The Cure.
It’s an indie fan’s dream and it’s paired with a pretty staggering attention to detail, even if some of the dialogue overshoots the 90s brief and ends up feeling corny instead. At one point, a character’s mother refers to the police as the ‘pigs,’ which feels distinctly try-hard.
Fortunately, almost everything else works. There are buckets of nostalgia to wade through here, from the clothes and voice-acting (which evokes 90s snark in a very believable way), to the way mooching around their bedrooms reveals everything from a Roxy Music vinyl on Rockford’s turntable to scribbled notes on the back of a postcard outlining details of the trio’s (aborted) upcoming road trip.
At one point, you’re even required to rewind a cassette tape using a pencil – something that will no doubt send pangs through the heart of everybody born before 2000, though whether it’s as charming to everybody born after is harder to say.
At its heart, Mixtape is a story about being a teenager: the soaring highs, the crushing lows, the feeling of pushing boundaries and exploring, and raising the middle finger to boring adults. That stuff is universal and playing Mixtape, it all comes flooding back. What a rush.
Mixtape review summary
In Short: A heartwarming adventure about growing up, packed full of imagination and 90s snark, but its main strength is the way in which it manages to expertly capture what it feels like to be a young, bored teen on the verge of adulthood.
Pros: Inventive gameplay, with excellent music and a clear sense of love and care for the 90s setting. Most minigames are very good, with a surprising amount of wit.
Cons: The dialogue can be cheesy at times and the asides to camera and overly extended cut scenes can feel too much like watching a (rather slow-paced) film. Younger gamers will probably find it much less charming than 90s kids.
Score: 7/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £15.99
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Developer: Beethoven & Dinosaur
Release Date: 7th May 2026
Age Rating: 16
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