I Made You a Mixtape: The Card Game and Its 90 Songs

Somewhere in a shoebox, there is a cassette with your handwriting on it.

Maybe you made it for a crush. Maybe for a road trip. Maybe you sat by the radio for an hour, finger on the record button, waiting for the DJ to stop talking. A mixtape took real time to make. That was the point. When someone handed you one, it said something they might not have said out loud.

I Made You a Mixtape is a card game built on that feeling. It is small, fast, and clever. It was also co-designed by a guy who lives just up the road from Indianapolis. And after we played it, we found a way to make the songs on the cards actually play at the table. More on that below.

What is I Made You a Mixtape?

I Made You a Mixtape is a card game for 1 to 4 players that takes about 30 to 45 minutes. It was designed by Mike DiLisio and Dan Hughes, illustrated by Gary King, and published in 2025 by Massive Asterisk.

The setup is pure nostalgia. It is the early ’90s. Dan DiLisio, the coolest kid in the neighborhood, is leaving for college. He lets you and your friends raid his music collection before he goes. In return, he wants a mixtape for the drive. The best tape wins his Quantum Leap poster, signed by Scott Bakula.

Yes, the kid’s name is a mashup of the two designers. That is the kind of game this is.

The designers: a teacher, a dad, and a podcast

Mike DiLisio, from the classroom to The Dice Tower

If you watch board game reviews, you may know Mike DiLisio from The Dice Tower, where he is best known for covering solo games. Before that, he taught social studies at Mooresville High School for nearly two decades.

According to a Mirror Indy profile of local game designers, DiLisio is an Indiana University graduate who has lived in central Indiana since the early 2000s. After a stretch in Florida, he moved to Noblesville during the pandemic.

I Made You a Mixtape is also the first game from Massive Asterisk, the publishing company DiLisio started. He designed the game’s solo mode, which makes sense. Few people have played more solo modes than he has.

Dan Hughes, the dad who designed a game with his daughter

Dan Hughes came to game design through family. For years he made review videos for The Dice Tower with his daughter Cora, covering games for kids and families. During lockdown, the two of them decided to design a game of their own. That project became CoraQuest.

The podcast that started it all

Mike and Dan have co-hosted a podcast together since 2018: Sporadically Board with Mike and Dan. It is a loose, funny show about board games and whatever else catches their attention. Two friends talking about games every week eventually turned into two friends making one.

The game had a long runway. Dan had a playable version up on Tabletop Simulator by late 2022, about two years before the Kickstarter. That version is still free to try today.

From Kickstarter to game shelves

The Kickstarter for I Made You a Mixtape ran from October 28 to November 14, 2024. It asked for $12,500 and funded on its first day. By the end, 2,248 backers had pledged $55,032, more than four times the goal, and Kickstarter tagged it a “Project We Love.”

Then it did something crowdfunded games almost never do: it shipped early. At least one backer reported an estimated delivery of November 2025 and a game in hand by September.

The reviews have been warm. Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower gave it an 8 out of 10. Illustrator Ian O’Toole called it “super quick to learn and play, with great theme and a fantastic look.”

How to play I Made You a Mixtape

The rules fit on an index card. The decisions do not.

I split, you choose

The core mechanic is “I split, you choose.” It is the same rule parents use when two kids share a slice of cake: one kid cuts, the other picks first. Nobody can complain, because the cutter made the split.

Each round goes like this:

1. Split. Draw three Track cards. Split them into two piles: one pile of two cards and one pile of one card.
2. Pass. Hand both piles, face down, to the player on your left.
3. Keep. Look at the two piles you received and keep one. You keep every card in that pile, even the song you don’t want.
4. Return. Hand the other pile back to the player who split it.
5. Add. Place your new tracks on your mixtape.

You end up with two to four cards each round. When the deck runs out, the game ends.

The fun is in the split. You want to keep the good cards for yourself, so you build two piles that look tempting but are not. Your neighbor is doing the same thing to you.

Three ways to score

At the end, every tape is judged three ways.

• Flow. Each card shows a strip of tape. When the tape on a card connects with the cards above and below it, your tracks flow. Long unbroken runs score big. This is the puzzle at the heart of the game.
• Genre sets. More songs in the same genre score more points. A tight, themed tape beats a random one.
• Balance. A real tape had two sides of equal length. In the game, every song has a length, and a cube tracks whether Side A and Side B stay even. Let one side run long and you lose points.

Those three goals pull against each other. The perfect flow card is the wrong genre. The perfect genre card wrecks your balance. That tension is what makes a 30-minute card game feel like a real decision every round.

Who it is for

I Made You a Mixtape shines in a few situations:

• Solo players. The solo mode, designed by DiLisio, is a highlight.
• Three or four players. The split-and-pass loop has the most bite with a full table.
• Mixed groups. It teaches in five minutes and plays well with people who don’t usually play games.
• Anyone who made a tape. The nostalgia hits hard for Gen X and older millennials.

A few honest notes. Some players find the two-player game less exciting than the full table. And the song titles are drawn as handwriting on each tape, which looks great but can be hard to read across the table.

The 90 songs on the cards

The cards are real songs, all 90 of them. We built a free YouTube playlist of every song on the cards, in the same order as the list below, so anyone can play the soundtrack with no subscription.

A fun detail for sharp-eared players: the game is set in the early ’90s, but Dan DiLisio’s collection is ahead of its time. “All the Small Things,” “Genie in a Bottle,” and “Say My Name” did not come out until 1999. Maybe he has been leaping through time with Scott Bakula.

Here is the full list:

Our favorite house rule: play the winning tape

Here is the idea we can’t stop talking about.

The game ends with a score. But a mixtape was never about the score. It was about pressing play. So when the game ends, play the winner’s tape, for real.

1. Score the game. Crown your champion.
2. Snap the winning tape. Take a photo of the winner’s cards, Side A and Side B, in the order they were played.
3. Hand it to your AI assistant. Paste in the photo and the song list above, and ask it to build the playlist in that exact order.
4. Press play. The winning tape becomes the soundtrack for the rest of game night. Everyone else has to live with the champion’s taste.

Here is a prompt you can copy:

This is the winning mixtape from our game of I Made You a Mixtape. Read the Track cards in order: Side A top to bottom, then Side B. Match each card to this song list [paste the list]. Then build me a playlist in that exact order on YouTube or Spotify.

Some AI tools will build the playlist for you. Others will hand back an ordered list you can paste into your music app. Either way, it takes a couple of minutes, and the room hears the tape that won.

Including the song list matters. The titles on the cards are handwritten, and the list helps the AI match each card to the right song.

This is the part we love most. The scoring ends, and the room starts listening. The game was the reason. The people, and their questionable music taste, were the point.

Free download: the Mixtape J-card

Every real mixtape had a J-card: the folded paper insert where you wrote the tracklist by hand.

We made a printable one for game night. It is a real-size cassette insert with lines for Side A and Side B, a front cover for the champion’s name and score, and a spine for the title. Print it, fill in the winning tape, and fold it up. It even fits a real cassette case, if you still have one.

Download the free Mixtape J-card by joining The Ludarium newsletter below. You’ll get it right away, plus game night ideas, guides, and first word on the Ludarium Game Lounge in Indianapolis.

Where to find the community

I Made You a Mixtape has a friendly corner of the internet. Here is where to find it:

• The I Made You a Mixtape Facebook group, the official fan group.
• Sporadically Board with Mike and Dan, the designers’ podcast, also on Apple Podcasts.
• We’re Not Wizards, Season 9, Episode 536, an interview with both designers about the game and music nostalgia.
• The official rules and how-to-play page from Massive Asterisk, including a solo walkthrough from DiLisio.
• The free Tabletop Simulator version, if you want to try before you buy.
• Our free YouTube playlist of all 90 songs on the cards.

Where to buy it in Indianapolis

I Made You a Mixtape sells for about $25 to $26. Check your friendly local game store first. If you’re in central Indiana, start with our guide to Indianapolis board game stores.

It is fitting, really. Indianapolis is home to Gen Con, the biggest tabletop convention in North America. It is also home to the people who make the games. I Made You a Mixtape was co-designed by a Noblesville resident, and its Kickstarter was listed out of Indianapolis. Local games deserve local tables.

Frequently asked questions

How many players can play I Made You a Mixtape?

One to four. It has a full solo mode, designed by co-designer Mike DiLisio, and it plays best solo or with three or four players.

How long does a game take?

About 30 to 45 minutes. Most groups can learn it in five.

What kind of game is it?

It is an “I split, you choose” card drafting game with set collection. You split cards for your neighbor, keep the pile they leave you, and build the best tape you can.

Are the songs on the cards real?

Yes. All 90 cards are real songs, mostly from the ’80s and ’90s. The full list is above, and you can play all 90 in our free YouTube playlist.

Who designed I Made You a Mixtape?

Mike DiLisio and Dan Hughes designed it, Gary King illustrated it, and Massive Asterisk published it. DiLisio lives in Noblesville, Indiana.

Is it good for families?

Yes. The listed age is 8 and up, and it works as a bridge between generations. Parents get the nostalgia. Kids get to discover the music.

What’s on your desert island mixtape?

Every player at the table has a tape in their head. The one you would make if you could only take ten songs. So tell us: what’s on yours?

Join the newsletter below, grab the free J-card, and hit reply with your desert island mixtape. We read every one.

Never stop playing.