I can’t imagine that the guy who ran the local record store in my college town remembers me, but I reckon I’ll never forget him. An aging English punk who wore a tight black tee like a uniform, he was just as responsible for shaping me into the person I am today as my professors. Any time I’d visit the store, something I was doing two times a week minimum for four years, I’d walk away with what would become a personality-defining record hand-picked for me by someone who, to me, was the epitome of cool. More impactful than the recommendations was the fact that I never got the sense he looked down on me as a lowly college kid harshing his vibe. Everyone was cool at Angry Mom Records.
The same is true at Repeater Records, the fictional music shop at the center of Wax Heads. It’s a local watering hole for a small town, where old music snobs and pre-teens are both welcome. It’s your job as a cashier to treat everyone who comes to you for recommendations as an equal — even the normies who are only there to buy the latest album from the world’s most beloved pop star. That premise serves a breezy record store simulator with a light deduction puzzle hook, while setting up a thoughtful story about a community bonded through music, and what we stand to lose when those spaces are depersonalized at the hands of big business.
You play the role of a new employee at the mom-and-pop vinyl shop that’s barely holding on, despite a steady stream of foot traffic. At first, your only concern is keeping the customers happy. (There’s some drama between your coworkers in the break room, but that’s someone else’s problem.) Each day, prospective buyers come up to you at the register and ask you to grab them a record. Sometimes their requests are specific, like the latest album from pop sensation Mimi. Easy enough. More often than not, though, your customers aren’t totally sure what they want. Maybe it’s a specific vibe they’re looking for, or maybe there’s a band whose name they’ve completely misheard.
That sets up Wax Heads’ clever puzzle flow: get a clue, figure out the right record, and send your customer home happy. It’s the same deduction hook that powers games like Strange Antiquities, and it cleanly applies to a musical scavenger hunt too. You need to comb through tracklists, carefully study cover art, and even take a peep at the record itself to make the right recommendation. Everything is a potential clue. I started to feel like a real connoisseur when I was so familiar with the game’s fictional bands that I could nail a recommendation in an instant, just from someone asking for a good local punk record.
Wax Heads understands that the role of a record shop isn’t simply to sell records; it’s to make you feel like you’re part of something.
Developer Patitte Games keeps that system as manageable as it can throughout the five-act story. You only ever have a handful of records in stock at a time, which makes it fairly easy to deduce what someone needs through clearly telegraphed hints. I kept waiting to be stumped, especially when a second floor opened in the store, but I was able to solve most puzzles in no more than 30 seconds. It’s not hard to recommend a good rap album when there are only two or three on the shelf at any given time. I whiffed just a few times, and the only real consequence for that was that I banked a little less cash to spend on store decorations between shifts. That and getting chewed out by one very offended music snob.
Though the puzzle complexity never quite escalates to a brainy crescendo, there’s real intrigue in learning Wax Heads’ musical world solely through albums, local zines, and music blogs. It didn’t take long for me to become obsessed with Brick Dog, a rock act whose members spun off into various bands after a tense breakup. Piecing together which bands are connected to Brick Dog, as well as which members can’t stand each other, is the more satisfying puzzle that you solve as you go. It’s easy to buy into the fiction too, because Wax Heads’ soundtrack is filled with original songs by its fictional bands. (There are no Mixtape-like needle drops, but there are some real nods to artists like Sparklehorse for real ones to find.) It’s full of killer garage rock and dreamy pop hits that make all those records feel tangible. You slowly turn into a music journalist as the story unfolds, uncovering the storied history of a vibrant local music scene.
Taking as sincere an interest in that fiction as your customers is crucial, because Wax Heads is interested in music’s ability to unite a community. As the days unfold, the behind-the-scenes drama comes to the forefront. Repeater Records is on the verge of closing its doors thanks to its shady landlord. That’s happening alongside the corporate takeover of a darling indie blog, and the dawn of an AI music recommendation app that aims to replace real curators with algorithms. The business world sees all of this as a way of reducing friction for listeners; who wants to go out to a record store when you could just save time by hitting a button?
Wax Heads challenges that idea through its optimistic play. It wants you to feel the joy of hand-selecting a record for someone and watching their face light up when you make the perfect pick. Even if you don’t get the exact album someone wants, they’ll occasionally still walk away happy to have found something new. You start to form connections with repeat customers who become as friendly as neighbors. I felt a jolt of pride when I helped a young girl discover punk rock, and when I helped a woman impress her crush by turning her on to a cool band. I was just happy to watch their tastes grow. Maybe my dude at Angry Mom Records felt the same way the day he sold me a used copy of Songs: Ohia’s The Lioness in 2009.
Sure, you can discover great music from an algorithmically-served Spotify playlist, but it can’t connect you to a community. You don’t get the experience of walking into a small business where everyone who works there knows your favorite bands. You don’t get those chats with your pal behind the counter, full of juicy town gossip, while they are bagging up your haul. You don’t walk away feeling like someone out there really gets you. Wax Heads understands that the role of a record shop isn’t simply to sell records; it’s to make you feel like you’re part of something.
Wax Heads is out now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Windows PC. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
About the Author
