Enjoying Mixtape is like enjoying a online game model of a highschool film. Children banter in regards to the that means of life and the theme songs that will play after they stroll in a room. They’re apprehensive about trying cool at an enormous get together. They’re obsessive about discovering booze. However below all of these tropes is a significant story about nostalgia, friendship, and teenage angst — and it’s all backed by an important soundtrack full of traditional hits.
Mixtape takes place over the course of a summer time day. You play as Stacey Rockford, a music obsessive and up to date highschool graduate. Rockford is leaving her sleepy California suburb for New York Metropolis the following morning on a quest to change into a music supervisor, and he or she and her two greatest associates — the low-key Van Slater and the rebellious Cassandra Morino — are whiling away the day earlier than an enormous get together within the night.
Rockford, Slater, and Cassandra actually really feel like a trio of youngsters. For one factor, numerous the sport is spent hanging out of their bedrooms and lazing round. They bullshit with one another about music and life, their futures and relationship, and no matter else is on their minds, all with the inflated self-confidence of youngsters who additionally know they do not know what the hell they’re doing. Rockford particularly likes to indicate off simply how a lot she is aware of about music, regularly breaking the fourth wall to straight deal with the digicam in regards to the present music alternative for her meticulous playlist for the day (which incorporates tracks from legends like Portishead, Iggy Pop, and The Treatment).
The meat of Mixtape is wandering as Rockford and varied objects, like a CD or a map of a deliberate street journey, and listening to the trio’s commentary. Consider nostalgic video games with a slower tempo like Life is Unusual or Gone Residence — Mixtape has the same pace. Generally, an object takes you again to a playable scene from their previous, and these could have totally different conditions or mechanics. These had been so hyper-specific — mixing slushies at a comfort retailer, stumbling drunkenly round a video rental store, taking pictures with a Sport Boy Digital camera-like gadget whereas sneaking right into a dinosaur-themed amusement park — that they continually acquired me to mirror again alone teenage years in suburbia.
Because the story goes on, the sport provides considerate layers to every character. Rockford, after coaxing Slater to play her one among his personal songs, asks him about why he makes music, making me notice that Rockford, for all she is aware of about music, doesn’t truly play something. Cassandra grapples with wanting freedom as a technique to push again on her overbearing dad and mom. Slater, regardless of outwardly presenting as one thing of a deadbeat, proves himself to be an extremely form and considerate human being. Even Cassandra’s dad, a party-busting cop who serves as the sport’s major antagonist, will get a second to shine.
A lot of Mixtape is, on its face, mundane. At one level, I spent 10 minutes skipping rocks — a not-insignificant period of time for a sport that I completed in about 4 hours. That mundanity, nevertheless, is what made the sport really feel so actual. My highschool expertise as a nerdy band child didn’t embody any of the sorts of shenanigans that Mixtape’s trio will get as much as. However I nonetheless associated to the story of a bunch of youngsters hanging out, trying again at their time collectively, and peering nervously forward to the longer term.
Mixtape is now obtainable on the Nintendo Swap 2, PC, PS5, and Xbox Sequence X / S.