It was only about a year ago when I learned that not everyone gets goosebumps from listening to music. There’s a French word for it–frisson–which describes the feeling some get when music or other powerful stimuli trigger a physiological response. This rush is felt in only about 50% of people in the world, it turns out. I used to think it was all of us. That’s probably a big part of why music means so much to me, because I’m in the lucky camp that gets to enjoy this positively overwhelming response when the right song hits at just the right time. Mixtape is an adventure game that leans into this magical sensation, pairing its heartfelt, often hilarious moments with a sweeping soundtrack to create a coming-of-age story I’ll never forget.
Mixtape is the second effort from Beethoven & Dinosaur, a small Australian team that includes some former rockstars who pivoted to game dev and brought their love for music with them. In it, you play the music-obsessed Stacey Rockford, whose headphones may as well be an organic appendage. Inspired by movies like Superbad and the works of John Hughes, the driving force of the ’90s-set story is Stacey’s attempt to make it to a killer beach party with her best pals Slater and Cassandra in tow.
The morning after this party, Stacey is off to chase her dream as a music supervisor–basically a professional mixtape maker for Hollywood projects–so this is her and her friends’ last hurrah together, whether they’re ready for life to drag them into adulthood and see them go their separate ways or not. While relatively small, these stakes are deeply relatable, revealing a lot of big, honest emotions across the four-hour runtime.
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