Mixtape is a nostalgic Life is Strange-like adventure where music grants "cosmic talents" to its skateboarding hero

If you love games like Life is Strange, sweet 80s tunes, and the idyllic (false?) memories of skateboarding through your tiny mid-west town as a disillusioned teen at the turn of the decade, 2025 has the perfect game for you.

One of the most interesting new games announced during the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 is Mixtape, a narrative-driven adventure that asks us to “experience the freedom of the teenage wasteland” through the transportive power of music. Through our heroine’s “strange, almost cosmic talent” for influencing others with her mixtapes, developer Beethoven & Dinosaur looks set to deliver a rose-tinted depiction of nostalgic adolescence, all painted through memories locked away in “the soundtrack of a generation”.

Think iconic tracks from Iggy Pop, The Smashing Pumpkins, Siouxie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and a great many others.

From sneaking out past curfew to first kisses, joyriding, and “maybe something… a little more”, hints the trailer, Mixtape looks like a beautiful encapsulation of what it meant to be young and dumb at a very specific point in time.

The music isn’t the only way the game tugs at your wistful heartstrings; with dropped-framerate animations for each character model rendered against backgrounds in full motion, there’s an evocative sense of time standing still for Mixtape’s protagonists while the world moves on normally around them. The passage of time and the fondness of memory seem to be a huge story beat in Mixtape. “What are we going to think of ourselves in 10 years?”, one character asks. In response, our hero simply says: “I’ll just remember to tell myself it felt important, at the time.”

If you’re feeling misty-eyed already, same here. We’ll have to sit tight until 2025 to learn more about this upcoming narrative experience, and honestly? It’s looking more than worth it. The fact that it’ll be on Xbox Game Pass day one is just an added bonus, but PC and PS5 owners will also be able to pick it up on their respective platforms.

Check out the upcoming Xbox Series X games slated to launch in 2024 and further afield, from Fable to Perfect Dark.

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