About 10 minutes into my hands-on with Mixtape, I started thinking to myself: “This is the first game I’ve played where its biggest inspiration might be ‘Wayne’s World’”.

And then I hit the interactive headbanging-in-a-car scene.

To be fair, that’s far from the only filmic inspiration – there are shades of ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, ‘High Fidelity’, ‘Superbad’ and much more. And it says a lot that Mixtape feels drawn from music, movies, and movies about music – it’s playing in a different space to most games, and that helps it feel truly, wonderfully unique.

The latest game from The Artful Escape developer, Beethoven & Dinosaur lives up to its title in multiple respects. At its heart, it’s structured around an actual mixtape, painstakingly put together by the main character, Rockford, filled with licensed tracks chosen with deep care (and, perhaps, a certain amount of appropriately teenaged pretension).

Each scene is centered around one of those tracks – meaning that, as much as its soundtrack, the gameplay functions like a mixtape too. Usually, that means a one-off gameplay mechanic to go with those songs – you’ll skateboard to Devo, chill with your friends to The Jesus and Mary Chain, and, yes, headbang in a car to Silverchair.

The game constantly spins you from one idea to the next, carrying you along on vibes, rather than the traditional slow-roll of accreted mechanics. It means that, while there’s a core storyline to follow, you could also describe this game as a series of connected sketches – which led me to that ‘Wayne’s World’ comparison.

Set in a gorgeously dreamlike ’90s, Mixtape centers around three best friends who head out for a final day together in their “Big Suck” hometown before Rockford leaves to pursue her New York dreams – but it tells that story, most often, through laugh-out-loud vignettes.

One section has you flash back to a wild night out that ends with all three teens stuffed into a shopping cart, careening down a hill, chased by police. Except, very quickly, it becomes clear that you’re very much inside someone’s imagination – the chase becomes more and more ridiculous, including a playable section from the point of view of an action news helicopter reporting on the chase. It doesn’t need to be sensible, it just needs to be fun, and it feels like a mantra the entire game will live by.

This is a game about teenagers, told specifically from their perspective – and it acts like it. You get their joy, their self-belief, their overexaggerations, and their severe lack of focus on a single task, represented not just in the story, but in what you’re doing as a player.

And lest you worry that this scattered approach might feel half-baked as a game, fear not – everything from skating, to performing a secret handshake, to performing an extremely inexpert first kiss (this needs to be seen to be believed) feels crafted with real care.

You might only be playing any given section for 5 minutes, but it feels as though Beethoven & Dinosaur has worked incredibly hard to ensure it’s a really good 5 minutes.

Surprise is Mixtape’s currency – never knowing what you’ll be doing next, or how it’ll be presented means that every new scene, every new song, and every new mechanic acts like a twist. I was beaming throughout my 30-odd minutes, and the real pleasure is that I have absolutely no idea what the rest of the game might ask me to do. I, for one, am ready to party on.

Mixtape is coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox on PC. It will be available day one with Game Pass.

Mixtape

Annapurna Interactive

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Get it now

On their last night together, three friends embark on one final adventure. Play through a mixtape of memories, set to the soundtrack of a generation. En route to their final party together, a perfectly curated playlist draws three friends into dreamlike reenactments of their formative memories. Experience a variety of narrative vignettes exploring the pivotal moments that shaped them. Players will immerse themselves in the teenage wasteland by playing through a mixtape of joyful gameplay, from skateboarding and flying to taking photos after hours at an abandoned theme park, hitting baseballs, and putting on a fireworks show from the backseat of a car. It's the greatest hits of the teenage experience, from the first kiss to the last dance. From Beethoven & Dinosaur, developers of BAFTA award-winning game The Artful Escape, Mixtape draws inspiration from classic coming-of-age movies, bringing together nostalgic aimlessness, mischief, music, the highs and lows of adolescence, and the bittersweet feelings brought about by growth, transformation, and moving on. Featuring music from DEVO, Roxy Music, Lush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, the Cure and many more. Skate. Party. Avoid the law. Hang out. Sneak out. Make out.