Mixtape

There are games that you forget as soon as they end.
And then there are those that hit you so personally that you sit for hours after the credits, just thinking about your own life, friends, and memories you buried deep inside yourself long ago.

Mixtape is just such a game.

From the moment you first ride your skateboard down the street while Devo blasts from the speakers, it becomes clear that this is not a classic video game. This is not a title that aims to impress with the amount of content, huge maps, or spectacular graphics. Mixtape wants to capture a feeling. That specific feeling of the last days of high school when you know that life is changing irreversibly, but you still try to ignore the fact that your "carefree and thoughtless" days are coming to an end.

And that’s exactly why the game hits emotions so brutally.

While playing, I often caught myself pausing the game and just staring at the screen for a while. The game constantly brought up memories I honestly thought I had long forgotten. Small conversations among friends, the feeling that your whole life is just beginning, but also that quiet panic that something big is irreversibly coming to an end… all of it hit me much more emotionally than I expected. Some scenes were almost painful to relive because they incredibly reminded me of my own high school days and the people who made up my whole world back then. The game has that rare talent to unexpectedly take you back to moments you didn’t even know still meant so much to you.

Because of Mixtape, for the past week, a large part of my conversations with my best friend from high school starts with the sentence:
“Hey… remember when we were in high school…”

And every time after that follows another story, another memory, and another moment we hadn’t touched on for years until this game reminded us that they still live somewhere within us.

The story follows three best friends - Rockford, Slater, and Cass - during their last night together before adult life takes them in completely different directions. What starts as a spontaneous evening full of music, skating, alcohol, laughter, and silliness quickly turns into an emotional collision of everything they haven’t said out loud for years.

Rockford is the heart of the whole story. Obsessed with music, nostalgia, and memories, she views her whole life as the soundtrack of a movie yet to be filmed. Slater comes across as the type of person who will always be there for others even when he has no idea where he’s going in life. And Cass… Cass might be the most tragic character in the whole story. A girl from a strict family who desperately tries to find her own identity and escape from the life that others are trying to impose on her. Their dynamic feels so natural that you quickly forget you’re watching digital characters. The conversations have that chaotic energy of real friends - interrupting each other mid-sentence, inside jokes only they understand, silences that speak more than dialogue, and a constant feeling that beneath it all lies a fear of separation.

And that feeling of transience hangs over the entire game like a cloud.

The greatest strength of Mixtape is not the story itself, but the way it forces you to recall your own memories. First loves. Last days of school. People you were convinced would always be a part of your life. The music you listened to while thinking you would be young forever. This is a game that understands how music can be tied to memories.

The main star of the game is the soundtrack, which is absolutely phenomenal.

Devo, Joy Division, The Cure, Iggy Pop, Smashing Pumpkins, and numerous other artists are not just "cool songs in the background" here. Each song is carefully selected to define the emotion of the scene. Sometimes the music creates a feeling of freedom and euphoria as the crew drives through the night streets. Sometimes it completely breaks the atmosphere and turns an ordinary conversation into an emotional knockout. There are scenes where the game literally feels like you’re watching a lost indie coming-of-age film from the late 90s. And that’s when Mixtape shines the most.

Gameplay is entirely subordinated to that experience. There is no “skill issue.” There is no wrong decision. Instead, the game guides you through a series of interactive memories and emotions. You skip stones on the water, throw toilet paper at houses, perform skateboard tricks, light fireworks, rent movies while drunk, and participate in a bunch of small moments that sound trivial on paper… but in the context of the story, they feel incredibly real. The game even allows you to linger on some activities as long as you want, as if it’s telling you: “Enjoy the moment while it lasts.”

Visually, Mixtape looks absolutely stunning. The combination of claymation aesthetics, cel-shaded animation, and almost realistic photographs gives the game a dreamlike atmosphere, as if players are passing through someone’s idealized memory of youth. The emotional transitions between scenes are particularly impressive. One moment the world bursts with colors and life, and in the next, everything turns black and white as the characters go through an emotional breakdown. And each of those moments feels carefully directed.

The most beautiful thing about Mixtape is that it doesn’t try to be an “important game” forcefully. It doesn’t preach life lessons. It doesn’t try to be pretentious. It simply honestly depicts that strange, painful, and beautiful phase of life when you realize that childhood is ending, and the future is coming much faster than you thought.

And that’s why it stays so strongly under your skin.

Because at the end of the day, Mixtape is not a game about saving the world.
It’s a game about saving memories before time swallows them.