Mixtape is a lot of things. It’s energetic, it’s nostalgic, it’s outrageously itself, it’s big in small ways and small in big ways. It’s punk rock. It’s a synth ballad. It’s a piano melody and an electric guitar thrash. But is it a video game? I’m not sure, but I think I like it.
The follow-up to Beethoven & Dinosaur’s The Artful Escape, all of those definitions - including the query over whether it fully fits the bill as a video game - could be applied to both games. But while The Artful Escape and Mixtape each lean into their musical influence, offer up a story you can feel rattle your ribcage like an 808, and don’t overcomplicate their gameplay, the two are quite different.
Where The Artful Escape was a 2.5D simple sidescroller with a few rhythm sections that acted as what you might call ‘boss battles’ if you were happy to stretch the definition, Mixtape is more grounded. You wander around a few select environments, interacting with objects to activate memories - cutscenes, dialogue, or new playable sequences - before moving from place to place with some playable skateboarding.
Perhaps, if I can be wholly unoriginal and reach for a metaphor I’m sure many others will, it is best to think of Mixtape as something of a sophomore album. It’s the same artist at a different time in their life, drawing from new influences and cultivating a fresh sound. Hardcore fans will hear the similarities in bass lines, but Mixtape is a broader, more confident attempt that’s more likely to be a crowd pleaser, even if it’s a little less brash.
Mixtape’s Small Moments Make It Memorable
Mixtape is more grounded in its narrative, too. Where The Artful Escape was a sci-fi tale of traveling beyond the stars to explore the magic of psychedelic music and identity, Mixtape is more relatable. Our hero, Stacy Rockford, is moving to New York to attempt to become a music supervisor. This is her last night in the Big Suck, her sleepy hometown, and she’s made the perfect mixtape to celebrate one last party with her two friends before they leave town too on a roadtrip once planned for three.
The stakes are so small at times you can barely see them, but this is why they feel so relatable. This is how Mixtape is small in big ways. When a game tasks you with saving the world, you sort of know it will end with you saving the world one way or another. In Mixtape, I had no idea where Stacy’s story would go, and across the short, four-hour runtime I found myself both invested in her future and cursing her and the world for conspiring against her one last party.
How Mixtape is big in small ways comes in the slightly dreamlike reality it sometimes fades into. Since the game is so reliant on memory - and song choice, which Stacy often breaks the fourth-wall to educate you on - we get snapshots of Stacy’s biggest moments, or at least how she wants to picture them. She might remember floating through suburbia crashing into huge pig-shaped parade balloons, or playing softball with her MVP friend and imagining the small backwoods field grow into a huge stadium whose clock is just waiting to be shattered into a million pieces a la The Natural.
Speaking of a million fireworks, you’ll get these too, conducted into explosions with a tap of the shoulder buttons. These buttons are used expertly throughout Mixtape, with interactivity woven into everything from holding hands so tight you never want to let go to acting out a sloppy, disappointing first kiss. The thumbsticks manoeuvre spit-clad tongues in brace face mouths. It’s gross. It rules.
See?
Don’t Expect To ‘Play’ Mixtape All That Much
Because of the limited gameplay, you can’t really be bad at Mixtape. Much like you can’t really be bad at listening to music. But of course, we all know people who are. That’s the heart of Mixtape, really. You have to be prepared to root for our counterculture heroes, and to see the memories and conversations as the game itself, not the stitching that takes you from minigame to minigame.
Mixtape has already drawn comparisons to Life is Strange thanks to its artstyle, teenage protagonists, and the fact that any game that stars a woman who does not come armed with a gun or sword gets compared to Life is Strange eventually. It’s not unlike LiS, but don’t go in expecting a tense narrative or mystery or massive twist. It’s just life, man. Use it or lose it.
Its use of memory is also a lot more inventive than many other games that rely on this backdrop. Not just in terms of the inventive gameplay, but the very point of these memories engages you on a deeper level than many games of this ilk. There’s a subtle difference in that most games use these moments as flashbacks, wherein important narrative breadcrumbs are fed to you in a trail leading somewhere. Because Mixtape is not interested in leading you in this way, the memories are far more about how they make you - and Stacy - feel.
What it all amounts to is that if you click with Mixtape, you’ll find each pedal kick and string twang and warbled vocal beat to the tune of your own heart. If you don’t, then there might not be much else here for you. It’s a story game that deliberately downplays its own story. Bold, extremely effective, but risky. It lives up to its name - it’s a lot of disparate elements combining to make a whole that is not quite cohesive yet is in constant conversation with itself. Translation: there’s a lot of different parts to it, but mostly it’s one big wall of noise that doesn’t offer much if you don’t vibe with it.
Despite the limited gameplay and slightly repetitive nature of wandering around rooms to click on objects, Mixtape is an experience I’ll remember for a long while. The sharp dialogue that feels real and stays the right side of grating, easy-going storytelling, excellent soundtrack, and supreme confidence to play around with the medium make Mixtape well worth tuning into, even if some will be put off by a perceived lack of things to do. I still haven’t really figured out if Mixtape is a video game, but I do know that I thoroughly recommend you give it a spin.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 85/100 Critics Rec: 85%
- Released
- May 7, 2026
- Developer(s)
- Beethoven & Dinosaur
- Publisher(s)
- Annapurna Interactive
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Narrative, Adventure
- Excellent grounded narrative
- Inventive use of memory
- Cool gameplay sequences throughout
- Not much gameplay
- A little short
- Relies on you immediately connecting with its vibe