Mixtape is about 3 kids getting out of high school and facing the fact that life is going to now pull them in different directions. It takes place in the mid-90s. I myself graduated high school in 1979, but Mixtape still hit me hard with the nostalgia feels. I guess high school never really changed, at least not until cell phones were invented. These three were up to the same trouble I was back in the day. Skateboarding around town, getting high, trying to get booze, and hitting up secret parties, the location of which passed by word of mouth.

The comparison I keep coming back to is American Graffitti. Same mix of laughs and melancholy for times lost.

I absolutely ADORED Mixtape. The main character is Stacey Rockford, a girl whose superpower is finding the right song for any occasion. The soundtrack is a big part of Mixtape (probably not a surprise given the name) though I have to confess a lot of the music I’d not heard before even though it was from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Lots of b-sides and such. Stacey announces each song, breaking the 4th wall, as it starts to play. Her two friends are Van Slater, the tall skinny beanie wearing kid who says “cha!” for yes unironically. But he has a weirdly philsophical side. The third member of the party is Cassandra. Her dad is a cop and her parents are super strict, so when she got old enough to rebel, she deliberately sought out Rockford and Slater to hang out with them.

I loved all three of these characters. Y’know when you consume a piece of media and you can kind of ‘map’ the characters onto real life people you’ve known? That was what happened with me and the Mixtape trio.

Before I go too much farther I should warn you that Mixtape isn’t much of a game. I guess it’s more ‘visual novel’ than anything (I’m not sure I exactly know what a visual novel is). There are interactive sequences that you can zip through or hang out and enjoy, but there are no fail states or branches in the narrative. I finished in in under 4 hours. I didn’t mind because it told the whole story it has set out to tell, and didn’t pad things out.

So what you have is a 4 hour experience with great music, a great story, great voice acting, an interesting art style and honestly I can’t find a single nit to pick. Game of the Year for me, so far. 5 out of 5 stars. A masterpiece. I laughed, I cried, I cringed, I nodded along in agreement. I was completely, totally lost in this world. I have not been so impacted by a game or a movie or a book in a long, long time.

Will you like it? I’m not sure. I wonder how younger kids who grew up with cell phones and play dates will react to it, as it takes place in a very different time where sneaking out of the house was a thing and kids had secret hideouts they’d go to in order to party. We used to break into a local school to skateboard through the halls, just for the hell of it. These kids skateboard through a mall that is being built. We had that one place you could hang out in front of to get someone to buy us beer. These kids have the same kind of place. It all felt wonderfully familiar to me and got me thinking a lot of old friends, some of whom are no longer with us.

Anyway…yeah, I loved Mixtape. I JUST finished it and now I think I need to go sit with my thoughts about it.

Mixtape is out on pretty much every platform for around $20. It’s also on Game Pass where it is a ‘Play Anywhere’ title. I played about half of it on PC and half on the Xbox. I recommend wearing headphones, and when you boot the game on PC you’re told it plays best with a controller.