Mixtape is a narrative adventure game where the story unfolds alongside a carefully curated playlist of songs created by teenage protagonist Stacey Rockford. To properly reflect the experience of playing it, I’ve created an original 10-song mixtape inspired by the game to complement this review. My rule here was that I could only use songs I would have included when I was Stacey’s age and experiencing the same small town blues. You can listen to it via Spotify or YouTube while you read along.
1. “The Opera House” (The Olivia Tremor Control)
“Let’s go to the opera / since all of our favorite memories have failed us.”
Selecting the opening track of a mixtape is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life. It’s the difference between just friends and til death to us part. You aren’t just picking any old tune. Not even close! Your opener is a mission statement in riffs and rhythms. Do you want to tell someone you’ll be best buds forever, even after high school? That you’re going through it and need help? That you can’t live another day without them? You need to set the stage in those precious first few minutes while still delivering a track so powerful, or just fucking cool, that it gets the listener to hit play again when the disc stops spinning. The energy matters. The tempo matters. The lyrics matter. (Unless you’re starting on some ethereal shoegaze shit.) This is your moment to grab someone by the hand and take them on an odyssey they’ll never forget. Memories that will live forever in stereo.
Like Rage Against the Machine at Lollapalooza 1993, Mixtape makes one hell of an entrance. The latest game from Beethoven & Dinosaur, the studio behind 2021’s rocking The Artful Escape, makes its intentions clear as you begin by skateboarding down a winding street to the throbbing synths of Devo’s “That’s Good.” I see the vision instantly: Suburban angst, youth in revolt, endless parties. I’m rolling into a narrative-driven coming-of-age story told through playable memories, all set to a soundtrack by a curator who knows their shit. Say no more. I willingly give my hand to creative director Johnny Galvatron and let him pull me into his teenage rebellion.
2. “Because of You” (Letters to Cleo)
“Remind me again of what I’m gonna miss?”
The stakes come down if you did your first job right, but track two is still a delicate operation. It needs to follow the same vibe you established from the jump — you can’t be hopping between Dinosaur Jr. and Steve Reich this early, man — but you can’t overshadow your opener either. And there needs to be a transition so fluid that it sounds like you’re listening to an album with deliberate sequencing rather than a reshuffling of disparate songs. Your goal here is to twist the volume knob down just one tick so you can start chatting with the person on the couch next to you. Call it a pause for exposition. Hi, how are you? Let’s catch up for a second.
Mixtape follows three teens living in a small town circa the mid-’90s who are on the cusp of breaking out. Stacey Rockford is the de facto leader of the trio, a know-it-all music snob who dreams of making it to the big city and becoming a professional Hollywood music supervisor. Van Slater is your lovable burnout who seems chill to hang around town forever. And there’s Cassandra Morino, a time bomb begging to get out from under her overprotective father’s thumb. Before life splits them up, the three amigos vow to go out on a high note by crashing the party of the year, all to the sounds of a mixtape that Stacey has curated for their final adventure.
Those are the perfect ingredients for a delightful video game take on Slacker, Richard Linklater’s definitive 1990 stoner comedy. The early-game comedy comes from watching three big personalities one-up each other as they shoot the shit in Stacey’s bedroom, reliving their high school memories through music video interludes, and name-dropping seminal bands of the era. You start to wonder if they’re even going to make the party at all as you get wrapped up in the cast’s natural chemistry. Welcome to the friend circle. This is the feeling you stand to lose when the tape ends and the last person leaves the party.
3. “Waiting Room” (Fugazi)
“I’m gonna fight for what I wanna be.”
Now we can start having some fun. With your crucial one-two punch landed, the rest of your mix is wide open. But don’t get too comfortable: There’s still an art to song selection. You want to introduce your listener to some cool music, but you don’t want them to look at the track list and get entirely turned off by a bunch of band names they’ve never heard of. I mean, The Olivia Tremor Control? Really? You need a recognizable band or two on here — or at least a “real ones know” kind of dive bar staple — to keep things approachable without going full-on college radio DJ. A gentle ebb and flow between familiarity and discovery.
While the story in Mixtape unfolds through bedroom banter and cinematically staged scenes, it’s really told by the music. The Beethoven & Dinosaur team take their roles as curators seriously here, composing a track list of more than 20 songs with virtually no skips. Familiar hits from the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins and Portishead seamlessly weave together with deeper cuts from Rainbow and Harpers Bizarre, creating a tapestry of genre-hopping sounds. Crucially, Mixtape actually understands what a teen who considers themselves a music aficionado would really be listening to. Stacey isn’t walking around in a Metallica tee like a cool teen in an out-of-touch TV show; she’s spinning B.J. Thomas, just as my coolest high school friend turned me on to Townes Van Zandt. There’s an authenticity to the song selection here that gives Mixtape the real sound of growing up. These are characters figuring out their futures through song.
