There are not many games that open with Devo and end with Stan Bush's 'The Touch' reducing you to a puddle. Mixtape manages exactly that, and it does it without a single apology.
Released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC, Mixtape is a short, story-driven experience set in the late 1990s. You follow three teenagers , music-obsessed Stacy Rockford, creative free spirit Van Slater, and suburban rebel-in-waiting Cassandra Morino , through a single day leading up to one final party before adulthood arrives and ruins everything.
The John Hughes blueprint, remixed
The inspirations here are not exactly hidden. Mixtape wears its influences openly: John Hughes films are the obvious foundation, but developer Gameshot (according to Empire's review) also pulls from Kevin Smith's Mallrats and the deeply underrated Empire Records for texture. The three leads map neatly onto familiar archetypes, but the game earns those references rather than leaning on them lazily.
The story unfolds through trinkets scattered around bedrooms. A photo, a trophy, a crumpled note , each one triggers a playable memory, and this is where Mixtape gets genuinely strange. One sequence has you controlling both tongues during an awkward first kiss. Another warps the camera as you guide a stoned Van through a haze. A third has you stomping through an abandoned theme park like a kaiju. These are brief, borderline surreal vignettes, but they land with real emotional weight.
Mixtape is described by Empire as "a short, almost dreamlike experience" , expect a compact playtime rather than an open-world epic.
A soundtrack doing serious heavy lifting
Every scene in Mixtape is anchored to a track from Rockford's curated setlist, and the music selection is genuinely impressive. Lush's 'Monochrome', The Smashing Pumpkins' 'Love', Devo's 'That's Good', and the borderline hipsterish inclusion of Harpers Bazaar's 'Witchi Tai To' all appear. Rockford introduces each song to the camera with an explanation of why it matters, channeling the obsessive music-nerd energy of High Fidelity.
The key here is that every song fits its scene precisely. Even 'The Touch' by Stan Bush, a track most people associate with 1986's Transformers: The Movie, gets recontextualized into something that hits exactly where it's supposed to.
Where the cracks show
Mixtape is not without friction. The playable memory sequences play closer to WarioWare microgames than anything with real mechanical depth. The visual style, a pseudo-stop-motion aesthetic that Empire's reviewer compares to Into The Spider-Verse, looks excellent in those bespoke moments. But the deliberately low frame rate makes controlling Rockford between memories feel genuinely awkward, described as "manoeuvring a juddering marionette."
Those are real issues. For a game that lasts only a few hours, any moment that pulls you out of the experience matters more than it would in a 40-hour RPG. What most players miss, though, is that Mixtape is not trying to be a mechanical showcase. The controls are secondary to the feeling, and the feeling is the entire point.
Why this one lands differently
Coming-of-age stories are rare in gaming. The medium defaults to power fantasies, and the quiet ache of being 17 and running out of summer does not translate easily to a controller. Mixtape gets there, and it does so through specificity: the right song at the right moment, a memory triggered by a dusty trophy, three characters who feel like people rather than archetypes.
For a deeper look at what else is worth playing right now, our game reviews section has you covered. If you want to prepare for the emotional sucker punches Mixtape throws, there are also gaming guides that can help you navigate the trickier sequences without breaking the mood.
Mixtape is available now across all platforms. If the late-90s setting and the soundtrack lineup mean anything to you, this one deserves a few hours of your time.
