Mixtape

A musical delight from start to finish, Mixtape sets a new standard for coming-of-age stories in video games and does so with a masterful sense of style.

Music can make us feel incredibly powerful or cathartically vulnerable. And when the right song hits at the right moment, it may just send a happy shiver down your spine, which is how I spent much of my time with Mixtape, and why I'll never forget it.

Mixtape, from The Artful Escape studio Beethoven & Dinosaur, is a delight. It's a celebration of teenage life that makes its point, aptly, just as a teenager would.

Lovely, beautiful, heartwarming, and unable to convince me it needed my input as a player at all.

The vibes are immaculate here even if you've never heard the term "shoegaze" before in your life.

Mixtape has an incredible atmosphere, and like my favorite coming-of-age stories, makes me nostalgic for a life I never lived.

The drunken antics and first kisses of a trio of tenacious teens make for silly yet undeniably enjoyable gameplay, framed by a playlist of bona fide bangers

Mixtape is a tribute to "the best years of your life." It combines authentic nostalgia for being young, with witty commentary on how life doesn't actually end just because you didn't have a Hollywood-style last night in town. The game's use of music is pitch perfect, and heavily contributes to Mixtape being one of the best coming-of-age games of the modern era.

Through utterly superb set-pieces, gorgeous visual design, and an impactful soundtrack, Mixtape crafts one of the most meaningful story games in a long time. It's beautiful to look at, a joy to listen to, and so enjoyable to play - altogether, Mixtape is a sensational achievement.

Mixtape's greatest accomplishment is that it more than lives up to its name. This is a thoughtfully curated collection of music, sure, but before that, it's an exciting, sentimental, funny game. Rather than simply twiddling your thumbs while the licensed music plays, you're living life with a soundtrack – the only way Stacey Rockford would have you do it.