It took Johnny Galvatron and his small team of neophytes six years to make The Artful Escape, a musical narrative game that debuted in 2021. With Mixtape, the team has been working on it for about two years.
Annapurna Interactive published the game from Galvatron, a former star from the Australian band The Galvatrons, even though it focused on a somewhat cursed genre of music games. It did well enough for Annapurna, despite its recent troubles, to publish Galvatron’s second game.
With Mixtape, Galvatron is back with a zany title that probably no one else would dare to make. I played a 20-minute demo of the game at the recent Summer Game Fest Play Days and then I interviewed Galvatron. The demo about the coming-of-age music game starts with a trio of teenagers on their last day together before they separate and head off on their own adventures after high school.
They’re skateboarding down a mountain road in their hometown, which they call “Big Suck,” and have to yell out “Car!” when they see an approaching car. To the tune of a Devo song, they make it down the hill — a good portion of which you as the player have to guide the skater to safety. And then they stop at the main character’s house.
There’s a scene when two teens kiss and you have to take control of their tongues and make sure they are appropriately mixing together. That part was hilarious, and made me feel like I really needed to play the rest of the game. Of all the games I saw at Summer Game Fest, this was one of the most delightful.
It features music from Devo, Roxy Music, Lush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, the Cure and many more. You get to play through a mixtape of memories, set to the soundtrack of a generation.
The game will release soon on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. It will be available day one through Xbox Game Pass (Series X|S, Windows). Mixtape was part of the Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest 2025 selection and was exhibited at the Tribeca Games Festival in New York.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Johnny Galvatron is founder of Beethoven & Dinosaur, the creator of Mixtape.
Johnny Galvatron: Mixtape is our second game as Beethoven and Dinosaur. We made Artful Escape, which was another music game. More about performing music. We wanted to do a game–basically I just wanted to show people “That’s Good” by Devo, which is my favorite Devo song. We started with the track list, first of all. I wanted to have this really good, deep cut mixtape, and then try to weave this narrative through the songs and the emotions of the songs. Try to use the medium, try to use gameplay to express things that I usually express through games, like betrayal or teenage freedom. It’s more about using the medium to try to evoke these kinds of feelings, rather than something that’s difficult.
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