One Last Night, 28 Perfect Songs: Mixtape Hits Home

Some games tell you exactly what they are within thirty seconds. Mixtape opens with Stacey Rockford kicking off her skateboard to Devo’s “That’s Good,” the world blooming into colour and motion around her, and in that instant you understand the whole thing: this is a three-hour interactive memory, a coming-of-age story told through keepsakes, flashbacks, and 28 perfectly chosen songs. It’s the second game from Melbourne’s Beethoven & Dinosaur, the BAFTA-winning team behind The Artful Escape, and it is one of the most quietly special things I’ve played this year.

Here’s how it breaks down:

A last night, set to the perfect playlist

Mixtape follows three high-school friends — Stacey Rockford, Cassandra, and Slater — on their final night together in the small California town of Blue Moon Lagoon, before each heads off into the rest of their lives. Rockford, an aspiring music supervisor forever in her orange-cupped headphones, is leaving for New York. Cassandra, the rebellious softball star with a controlling cop father, is off to college. Slater is just… sticking around, man. Rockford, being a genius at playlists, has built the ultimate soundtrack for the evening, and each track pulls the trio into dreamlike, exaggerated reenactments of their formative memories.

The writing, from studio founder Johnny Galvatron, is where the magic lives. The dialogue has that sarcasm-fuelled shorthand that only exists between people who’ve known each other long enough to stop performing. Lines like calling a T. rex “the Barry Manilow of dinosaurs” land without trying too hard, and I found myself hunting down every interactable object just to make sure I wasn’t missing a zinger. It occasionally slips into a scripted cleverness real teenagers don’t quite have, but it rarely breaks the spell.

More to watch than to play — and that’s okay

I need to be straight about the gameplay, because it’s the one real caveat. Mixtape is cinematic in scope and light on interaction: you’ll steer a shopping cart, guide a character, tap a button to headbang, and in one hilarious bit, control two teenagers’ tongues during a first kiss. The interactive elements are varied and charming, but they never demand much of you, and the near-total absence of puzzles means there are moments where you’re pressing forward rather than truly participating. It’s the one area where the game clearly had room to grow.

And yet — I’m normally the type who gets bored stiff by minimal-gameplay games, and Mixtape never once lost me. The short length is genuinely its strength; it says what it wants to say, lands the feeling, and rolls credits before any of it can wear thin. There’s only so much teenage angst you can show before you owe the audience resolution, and Mixtape understands that perfectly.

For anyone who ever attached a song to a memory

When the credits rolled, I sat quietly for a moment — which is really all you need to know about whether a story landed. Mixtape is coming-of-age comfort food for anyone who’s ever treated music not just as art but as the personal soundtrack to their own life. Even if you barely recognise the playlist (I only knew a handful of the songs myself), the game still nails the emotional tone of every scene with real precision.

The one legitimate frustration: because you have to keep moving through a chapter for a song to play out, there’s no way to just sit still and let a track breathe — a strange limitation for a game so fundamentally about music. But that’s a small complaint against something this heartfelt, this stylish, and this sure of itself. If you have the kind of songs permanently welded to old versions of yourself, Mixtape is going to feel like it was made specifically for you.