How Long to Beat Mixtape?

Mixtape takes about 3 hours to beat. Here's the full chapter list and what to expect for a completionist run.

Mixtape is a short, sharp narrative game from developer Beethoven & Dinosaur, published by Annapurna Interactive. You play through one last summer day with Rockford, Slater, and Cassandra before the trio goes their separate ways, backed by an excellent soundtrack and a clear love for 1980s coming-of-age films. If you're on the fence about the runtime versus the price tag, here's exactly what to expect.

A standard playthrough of Mixtape runs roughly 3 hours. A focused playthrough clocked in at 3 hours and 6 minutes on Steam, including end credits.

That's your baseline if you're moving through the story without stopping to hunt down every optional dialogue line or interact with every background object. Some chapters are done in a few minutes, while others stretch longer depending on how thoroughly you engage with the minigames and environmental details.

One last day with the trio

If you want to clean up achievements and trophies, budget 3 to 5 hours, with around 4 hours being the realistic benchmark. The extra time comes from replaying specific chapters to meet precise conditions, such as hitting only home runs as Cassandra or popping three pig balloons in a set window.

Game Rant's playthrough hit 65% of available achievements in that initial 3-hour run, which counts as a fairly thorough pass. The remaining 35% of achievements don't require massive time investments; most just ask you to complete an action in a particular way during a specific chapter.

The good news: Mixtape has a Chapter Select option accessible from the main menu. Once you finish your first playthrough, you can jump straight back to any chapter to mop up anything you missed without replaying the whole game.

Chapter Select saves replay time

There are 30 chapters in total, and they vary considerably in length. The opening scene takes just a few minutes, while chapters built around minigames or optional exploration can run noticeably longer depending on your pace.

Several achievements are tied to specific chapters and can only be triggered once per playthrough. If you're chasing a platinum or full completion, scan the chapter names above against a trophy list before you start so you know which chapters need extra attention.

This is the question that comes up every time a short narrative game launches, and Mixtape is no exception. At $19.99, the math works out to roughly $6.50 per hour on a standard run, which sits comfortably alongside other well-regarded short narrative titles in the same price range.

Mixtape currently holds a 94/100 average on OpenCritic with a 100% critics recommend rating, which suggests the runtime isn't hurting its reception. Games in the adventure games space have long proven that a tight 3-hour experience can hit harder than a bloated 30-hour one, and Mixtape appears to be leaning into that deliberately.

For the full picture on what you can unlock across the game's chapters, the Mixtape guides collection has everything you need to get the most out of your playthrough.