r/MixtapeGame

When Jenny fucking Goodspeed showed up to the hideout w cass. Dog I legit almost hummed my controller across the room. Cause no tf she didn’t bring her to our secret spot. It’s on sight at that point tbh.

Reading the online hate has been pretty weird.

As a non-gamer, I hadn't heard anything about this game other than a TikTok a couple months back saying if you like the 'Life Is Strange' series it's a great filler. I love that series, and I finally had a few hours today, so I decided to check it out. As a fan of LIS, I can't lie though: I was a little disappointed.

If you have something like XBox GamePass, it's a fun little couple-hour alternative to a movie. For me, it was $20 for two hours of '90s teen nostalgia. That being said, I've wasted a hell of a lot more than $20 seeing a movie I didn't like, so no skin off my nuts. But if I didn't have a lot of disposable income and lacked emotional regulation, I can see getting a little pissed.

There's no skill-based gameplay, puzzles, choose-your-own-adventure, or mystery, so it's probably not what the average person thinks they're getting into -- even if they're expecting a narrative-rich experience. It seems like most of the hate has been an overreaction to the hype. Seeing a bunch of reviews from critics giving it 10/10 or 5-stars is a bit baffling.

Looking at it critically, the story is pretty barebones, the dialog leaves a bit to be desired, and the aforementioned lack of traditional "gameplay" being replaced with multiple unskippable hill-bombing scenes that require viewer engagement to progress could feel pretty annoying/unrewarding.

BUT it is beautifully animated and the characters are interesting enough that I felt bummed when the story didn't flesh out more. It has so much potential! Kinda reminded me of how I felt after playing 'Firewatch'.

Overall, not my cup of tea but I can totally understand why so many people -- both folks my age basking in the nostalgia of it, or younger players who never got to experience the dopamine wasteland of the '90s -- love the vibes.

7/10 for me 🙂

Anybody else think this could be a cool series à la 'The Lost Tapes'?

It's crazy that for a game so relatively small/short the ammount of hate it's still getting. I love seeing all the positivity here, but genuinely I'm surpised how the hate is still going.

I made a small yt short about the game and how it inspired me to think about other music soundtracks (this isnt a self promo so I'm not linking or anything), and tell me why the first two comments are just 1 dude talking sht? With in seconds of eachother?

Like it's like people are bored and jobless browing the mixtape tags just so they can rag on it.

Can't wait for love for this game to outnumber the examples of hate. Because I can't even enjoy the tumblr tags for this game without running into bs.

Sucks.

I think Cass left that town and stayed gone. She’s in LA, working as a teacher at a public school. She coaches the softball team and helps kids get into college. She’s divorced with one kid, but on good terms with her ex. They share custody.

Rockford came out in NYC. Does Pride every year, but took a break when things got very commercial in the 2010s. She still shows up for the Dyke March though. She actually got that music supervisor job, had it for five years, then hated how commercial it was. Now she takes a smaller paycheck to work on small and medium sized indies. Sometimes she thinks about taking a swing at A24 films.

Her sister is her best friend, who ended up getting cast in a Broadway show as a chorus member, then moved up to swing, then landed a large supporting role. She got married and lives in Harlem, in a brownstone she renovated herself.

Van does soundtrack composition now, as well as experimental music. He has a weird side project that tours around the country. Maybe he was a burner for a while until that got a bit too mainstream. Now he’s on Berlin, working on building the scene there.

Jenny Fucking Goodspeed stayed in town, married pretty young, had three kids, and runs the PTA. She probably coined the term “wine mom”

Facebook came around and they all found each other. Rockford apologized for bailing on their trip, and in their early 20s they got back together to do the whole trip again, the right way.

27 tracks composed by Josh Abrahams and Johnny Galvatron to fill the blanks between the licensed tunes of the game ❤️

This post is basically a copy of my journal thingy over on Backloggd w some rewrites. It still might be a lil long but I really needed to share this w people. Also, quick shout out to the art direction in this game, I just adore the paintings and environments and character designs and animations.

Anyway, man, to be young, to be free... to have friends. I've always kinda had a sour relationship with coming-of-age stories, and I think Mixtape has both made me realize why and it's maybe cured my aversion to them. My teens were really tame; I was raised w a very "by the book" mentality like Cass, but without all the strict attitude behind it. It ended up making me feel really trapped, but I never had a real motivation to rebel, so I just ended up with some very boring years at best and I rly feel like I've wasted my youth. I mean, I even used to think that kinda stuff was lame, but this game gave me my Danny DeVito "I get it" moment (well I still think the methods are a little lame bc I'm 100% that bitch); I get now that it's rly about discovering yourself and getting your foot in at what's basically the start of the boundless complexity and endless possibilities that are human lives. I let my turn pass me by, but now more than ever I wanna hang out, I wanna talk to people, I want revenge and I want noise... I want nature and I want sunshine. Mixtape was like getting the childhood I never had.

I'm remembering a moment at the dinosaur place when they're talking about the kid who is cool bc he was smart, got good grades, but also partied hard, and how people worshipped him. I never was the type to party, but I related to that line a lot; I wasn't particularly nerdy-looking so ig I got away w being the smart kid, and people thought I was cool. Thing is, the only thing that ever comes to mind when I think about that is basically summed up in a quote from the chapter prior: "People are so preoccupied with their own self-loathing they'll kill for a little ray of sunshine." You might think someone's got it together, but you never really know what's going on in their heads; I never wanted any of it, I was just a kid. "[...] being young, you never get to go back [...]". I'm 22 now, and the time away from school has allowed ig for some of the trauma to mellow. This game's made me appreciate a lot more that I've still got my youth and it's rly pushed me to take advantage of it.

I struggle w feelings of loneliness a lot and I've hit a particularly low low, to the point where the idea's crossed my mind to break a promise, but it wasn't until my first time playing the game a few weeks ago when I seriously started considering it. School is really not a particularly easy topic for me to talk about, it hurt the life OUT of me and I promised myself I'd never go through something that again. But bread taste better than key and these are the things we do for basic needs; but more than this, Mixtape's made me really crave a young man's experience. I think I wanna go to college... (yk like the omni-man meme). The whole thing is stiiill up in the air, so most of all I just bring it up to illustrate how this game's affected me.

The game's short length 100% enabled it, but this might be the fastest I've come back to replay a game, and it's allowed me to appreciate so much more about it. I was listening to the playlist while writing the Backloggd thing, and went from originally having 50% to maybe 98% of the songs on my own playlists. I appreciate how the characters are about sex and drugs, but that it doesn't define their personalities. I find those kinds of things super insufferable whenever teens are partially or wholly involved in a story; it's what made me wait for reviews (HAHAHA) before playing it. But nope, they're open, they touch each other, they care, they're vulnerable. I was sobbing lmaooo; I want that so bad. I had no idea what this game would become for me.

This is also what Persona did for me; I even made a very similar post on that sub a few years ago. These games having shown me the power of friendship, youth and life. When I first started I figured it would just be a fun short adventure, which I would promptly journal and only come back to remember years later. It wasn't an established IP and I had no clues beyond the announcement trailer. I had no real expectations, only for it to become through compact spectacle, colorful fireworks and impeccable song one of my most profound gaming experiences. It was really weird having something so unassuming so suddenly take up so much space in my head, but it's quickly made its way into my favorite games of all time. I gotta say it's a beautiful fucking feeling.