Beethoven & Dinosaur is back with another feel good game.
Mixtape opens with some simple rules from protagonist Rockford, and they all, like her, revolve around music. CDs are high definition and best listened to with a pair of good headphones. If you don’t know what song would play as you walk into a room, you should think about it — partly because she’ll ask you eventually, but mostly because she really wants to tell you her own answer instead.
As Rockford skates down rolling hills with her friends Slater and Cassandra — and all throughout Beethoven + Dinosaur’s newest coming-of-age narrative adventure — her headphones are on, listening to the likes of DEVO or The Smashing Pumpkins. That makes complete sense, as Mixtape is just that — Rockford’s personal soundtrack, chronicling the life and times of her and her friends as they spend what could be the last night of their lives together.
“It definitely started as Johnny [Galvatron] being like, ‘I like these songs. I want to make a video game with these songs in them’,” said Woody Woodward, a producer of Mixtape who, with principal 3D animator Joe Toole, took me through the title’s Summer Game Fest demo at their Melbourne-based headquarters.
“We laid the game out in a horizontal slice instead of a vertical slice as we were solidifying the story, moving where the tracks were,” he continued. “There’s definitely a core list of tracks we began with, and then we added a bunch, took some out — just based on what we needed for certain parts.”
Set sometime in the 90s and with vibes that come straight from the likes of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Empire Records, and The Breakfast Club (or any other of a number of John Hughes films), Mixtape flows through Rockford’s soundtrack, getting us from setpiece to setpiece as the group prepares for one final party together, or sparks memories from the trio’s past.
Unlike in The Artful Escape, Beethoven & Dinosaur’s debut game, you’re not just moving Rockford from left to right on a set path, but taking part in mini-games and exploring 3D spaces like her home. Starting out, I grabbed a skateboard and pulled off some kickflips and ollies while Slater and I took turns yelling “car” as vehicles approached. Later, I needed to pull off a complicated QuickTime sequence to perform an equally complicated, yet very metal handshake, then used my controller’s two joysticks to control a pair of tongues as Rockford thought of kissing her crush.
As in The Artful Escape title, Mixtape uses music to almost perfect effect; I had a smile on my face for the entire thirty minutes I was able to play. Sometimes, it was because Rockford took time to explain just why a track she selected was perfect for a specific moment, and sometimes because I remembered myself rocking out in a clunky car, late at night, as Silverchair’s “Freak” was blaring through the junker’s tinny speakers.
“There’s something magical about being a teenager, not knowing who you are — having all the things around you that making you who you are,” Woodward said. “It’s a game about growing up; it’s quite universal, whether you were born 20 years ago or 30 or 40.”
“It’s about letting go and saying goodbye,” added Toole. “So in the act of having it be her last night with her friends and remembering them with you [the player], that’s really the tone. Everything is probably the last time.”
Mixtape makes great use of stepped animation, which you may have already seen in the likes of Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse.
“When we started working on the pre-production for this, I wanted to do something that hadn’t really been done — in my opinion — properly in video games yet,” Toole said. “We’ve seen [stepping] in movies like Spider-Verse, but I’ve never seen it done properly; in video games, it’s every second or third frame.
“We’re doing a little bit of stuff under the hood; we’re doing this stickering effect — where, when the camera’s moving and a character steps in motion, they can look really flickery. That’s typically what you see in other games,” he explained. “We basically pin the character’s image to the camera every however many frames to avoid that flickering, and that’s what they do in movies like Spider-Verse. It was a big influence, obviously, and I’m really proud of how we’ve put it all together; we’re saying more with less.”
“It feels like analogue, weirdly,” Woodward added. “Sometimes when we are making a new cutscene, or a new level, and we’ve not put the stepping in yet, it’s buttery smooth. I don’t think the game would feel the same if it was 60 frames-per-second, 120Hz; it doesn’t feel aligned with the rest of the game.
“Things were analogue, they were clunky, you were pressing buttons,” Woodward continued. “It’s a feeling. It’s the thing.”
It certainly is a feeling, one that’s grungy and hopeful and foolish all rolled into one; just like I was — or desperately tried to convince my friends I was — back in my own teenage years.
Mixtape was already high on my list of the most anticipated games of 2025 — and now, with thirty minutes under my belt, it’s definitely skyrocketed to the top. I cannot wait to play more.
Expect Mixtape later this year on Windows PC, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5. It’ll also be on Xbox Game Pass.
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