I still remember the first time that my friends and I switched from vinyl to cassette. My dad had a Dictaphone in his home office, and we had ridden our bikes to the Western Auto across the street to pick up a two pack of blank cassettes. We borrowed his Dictaphone, and put the microphone part up near the speaker of the radio in our music room. (The walls were lined with bookshelves, which were thickly stacked and acted like rudimentary soundproofing, so we didn’t drive mom insane while learning how to play The Final Countdown or Roseanne on piano and guitar.)
Entire mornings were spent holding that dictaphone ready to record songs as they played. We had no control over which songs would be aired, of course, but the local Top 40 station did a good job of repeating the same songs over and over so there was a good chance we would be able to tape Hall & Oates Private Eyes or the latest from Duran Duran.
Once the thirty minute tape was full, we had our very own mix tape to bring to parties or even to give to someone else. Sure, most of the selections were songs we really wanted to hear — and we played those tapes over and over until we had the songs memorized in order, and could even repeat the commercials and DJ patter that sometimes bled into the front or back end of the songs — but many of the songs were just interesting things that we caught.
Could any board game recapture the feeling of putting songs on cassette for a friend or crush? A new game coming from Quick Strike (the lighter imprint of Talon Strikes Studios) to crowdfunding in June is hoping that we say yes.
Rob Newton is the designer of MIX TAPE, a thirty minute tableau building card game for up to four players. Talon Strikes sent us a prototype version, and as a child of the 80s, I approve of the purples, pinks, greens and electric blues that dominate the color scheme of the box and cards. I also know that Eric Alvarado, the developer over at Talon Strikes, is a pretty big music collecting hound and the designer of numerous music themed games like Vinyl and Jukebox, so I was pretty curious about this game.
In Mix Tape, players compete to make the best…err…mix tape for their crush. Each tape is double sided, so players will try to “record” songs on both Side A and Side B. For the young’uns, cassette tapes had two sides, that were generally thirty to forty five minutes long each, and when you hit play, the cassette would play one side until it reached the end. Then, you had to manually flip the cassette over to play the other side.
I’m describing these manual events not only to educate some gamers — in our last play session, one of the players had literally never seen or operated a cassette deck before and had no idea how it worked — but to emphasize a point that I liked about Mix Tape. Games like this can sometimes be very mechanical, with a separation from the strength of the mechanics to the depth of the theme.
Not Mix Tape. The three actions in the game are to “listen” to the radio (get more song cards), “record” songs on one side of the mixtape (add song cards to either Side A or Side B of your tableau), or “play” your mix tape (run the engine of your tableau on one side or the other, whichever one was active at the time.)
I have been pleasantly surprised how thematic the three actions have been in our plays. When you listen, it really does capture the magic of just turning on the local pop station and hearing random song choices come out. Sure, you know that if you listen during America’s Top 40 at a certain time, you are bound to hear a particular song because everyone knew the top ten songs each week. And sure, you knew that your favorite DJ was going to play the hits at the top of each hour. But the serendipity of finally hearing a song that your buddies talked about at school right when you turn on the radio is captured in this action.
I remember going on a long summer vacation with my family. We were gone for almost three weeks, as we drove from Louisiana to Montreal and back. My dad was in charge of the radio, and we listened to 8 Track tapes all the way. When I got back, the first thing I asked my buddies was “hey, what did we miss, what was the big song of the summer”. As I recall, it was a dumb Frank Zappa song Valley Girl that everyone was talking about, and I had to listen to the radio for a few days before it finally played. Grabbing songs in Mix Tape feels like that.
But even “record” and “play” feel thematic, too, especially because you have to think carefully about where the songs go. Each player gets a mixing board, and you want to get the mixer levels up during the game for more points and to give you stronger actions. There are crush cards that show different genres of music that you will want to collect on your cassette. You can curate songs that flow together to score more points. So many choices, and they all feel tied to the mechanics, especially “play” because each time you run your cassette, you have to “flip” to the other side of the tape.
This could have been just a simple little card game, but there is some lagniappe. Not only do you get a very thematic box made to look like a cassette box that slides out with all of the components, but the components themselves include actual cardboard versions of mixing boards with little wooden pieces representing the sliders. That’s a nice touch, because moving up the matching colored sliders every time you play your songs feels very satisfying.
My brother and I eventually moved up from using Dad’s dictaphone to getting a rocked out dual cassette and vinyl recording all-in-one deck. We felt like giants when we set that thing up. Of course, with different tastes in music, we eventually settled on a system where Greg got to play his music on even numbered days of the month and I got to be in charge on odd days. But the cool thing was that he introduced me to songs and artists I never would have listened to and I did the same for him.
We never stopped recording songs off the radio, even as CDs came out soon thereafter. There was something about the portability of a mix tape and the fact that EVERYONE had a cassette deck in their car that never lost its luster.
Mix Tape is ultimately nostalgic as well as being fun to play, and if you like quick playing tableau / engine builders with an interesting theme, you should turn your radio dial to KSTR FM in June and check it out.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** A complementary copy of the game was provided by the publisher. **
Board Game Gumbo 
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