Music has always meant the world to me, so much so that I’ve always imagined myself to be involved with it somehow. Sadly, I have not been blessed with any musical talent whatsoever, so I always dreamed of the next best thing: working at a record store. It was not to be, though, with record stores having long struggled to survive in a more digitally focused world, and now I feel like my moment has passed. Luckily, though, we get a game like Wax Heads that lets me live out my dream instead, combining two of my great passions: music and gaming!
In Wax Heads, you are the new kid working at Repeater Records, a place that’s all about discovering music and connecting people through their shared love of the medium. It’s run by Morgan, who was once part of the biggest band on the planet and has now become a bit of a recluse who has seemingly fallen out with some of her fellow bandmates. Don’t ask her about it, though: she won’t talk about it, nor will she put any of her former bands’ records on the shelves.
Early on in the game, you’ll meet all of your different co-workers, all of whom share their own connections to music. There’s Tee, who adores music but can’t stand going to live concerts, or Hank, who – despite his age – is still trying to make it with his band, alongside a whole cast of quirky characters. And the quirk isn’t limited to your colleagues. As anyone who has ever worked in retail will tell you, customers come in all shapes and sizes, with their own motivations and machinations.
Most of the gameplay in Wax Heads comes down to helping those customers. They’ll come in looking for a record, but they will never just give you a name or a title. Instead, you’ll have to figure out their clues to make the correct recommendation. It’s here that probably the most impressive part of the game comes to life: the developers created an entire musical scene for the game, instead of relying on real-life musicians and bands. And not just that, but you can hear music by most of them in-game too, thanks to composer Gina Loughlin’s absolutely insane work. From death metal to rap, from indie to pop princesses, there’s something here for everyone, and it all sounds fantastic.
And while Wax Heads would work by just featuring that mechanic and not much more, there’s an entire story to get stuck into as well. You might be the new kid at the store, but you quickly get involved in the day-to-day drama that comes with working at Repeater. There’s plenty of intrigue to be found with the daily lives of your colleagues, but it’s the overarching story of the shop’s survival being at stake that will really draw you in. You see, while Morgan might have tried to move away from all the drama that came with her old band – including her sister and her ex-lover – things never stay buried for long. And they might just come back to haunt you in the present.
The story plays out through a mixture of the record-recommending gameplay – where you have to figure out what a customer is looking for through their attire, social media posts or other clues – and some visual novel-style dialogue, while you also get to indulge in designing flyers and packing up collector’s editions, among other things. It’s really impressive how Wax Heads just nails the feel and culture of a record store and the music community as a whole. It reminds me a lot of adaptations of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity or even something as wild as the Scott Pilgrim comics. It’s about the soul of music and what it means to people, how it connects us in all of its incredible, magical variety.
As you can tell, I am very enamoured with Wax Heads. I had a feeling this would happen, especially after having really enjoyed the demo. I had wondered if gameplay would grow stale after a while, though, but I’m really happy to say that this isn’t the case. There’s a lot of variety when it comes to each puzzle, and difficulty is amped up later on. Having finished the game, there’s still plenty I haven’t discovered yet, inviting me to play it all over again, which I most definitely will do. For example, there’s a game within the game that I need to get back to, and there’s a band of secret collectors within the game whose secrets I haven’t discovered yet.
There’s just so much to love here. The music, as mentioned before, is excellent, as is the entire visual style. It should come as no surprise that the art is so good, seeing as it comes from the same creator who brought us games like Welcome to Elk, being very reminiscent of those cartoons you could watch on something like MTV. Having completely unique art for every record featured in the game was incredible to see, adding layers to the history behind all of the bands and artists. It just all feels so richly designed; it’s astounding.
Aside from the music and the art, the writing was impactful as well, and the game’s puzzles all felt great to play. But most of all, the vibe is impeccable. There’s even a certain cameo by a character which left a huge smile on my face, as I had been thinking that featuring them in Wax Heads would just make sense. In the end, all of the puzzle pieces for this game fell into place, and it’s a true marvel to behold. And while the game does critique the likes of capitalism and A.I., it does so from a hopeful place. One where we can still dream about working in a record store, for example.
