Wax Heads | PC Review

Music is a key to life. It can make hours seem like minutes. It can support any mood. It can brighten the day. Music stores are few and far between these days. Independent record stores are a beacon of hope for those of us who treasure the vinyl experience. When I was younger, I would have loved to work at a music store. I managed to dodge two bullets as I worked at both Blockbuster (who had a failed Blockbuster Music arm) and Best Buy (who at one point owned Media Play, which also closed up soon after). Thankfully, those opportunities never came to pass.

Empire Records came out in the mid 90s. The film was already romanticizing the independent music stores before the major chains started failing left and right. The eclectic personalities and musical preferences made a fantastic movie that remains one of my favorites.Despite my love for the film, I never actually got to step behind the counter of a real indie shop. 

So, I am left to my dreams. Then, along comes Wax Heads to save the day. Working the counter, helping people find their oddball music choices, creating personalized advertisements, and finding a way to make it through our daily lives with that eclectic group of unique personalities is the name of the game. I hope it fulfills my dream.

The Needle Drops on Repeater Records 

You play somebody referred to as “newbie” or “kid”. You get hired by Morgan, a former lead singer of a pop band from the 80s, whose back story is filled with drama. You get introduced to a couple of unique personalities who also work at the record shop, Repeater Records. Before you know it, you’re opening the store and helping your first customer.

As the game progresses, you learn more about your coworkers. Their hopes and dreams, the struggles they’re going through. The store expands but then falls prey to a greedy landlord and a music executive determined to turn everything music related into AI. We need to save the store and the soul of music itself! 

As characters from Morgan’s past arrive throughout the game, you learn more about her past and her strained relationship with her sister, and former bandmate, Willow. You also do your best supporting your coworkers, as they also are progressing through their own minor stories or personal struggles. 

Wax Heads is 100% story driven. There is some gameplay involved, which keeps you engaged through the approximately eight-hour game.

Working the Counter 

The majority of the gameplay is helping the customers find the music that they want. Most of them are either looking for suggestions based on their tastes or giving you vague clues like mispronounced band names, song titles, or fan related information. You can find this information in the daily magazines and social media posts. The magazines are on the rack with the albums, the social media is in your interface app which also includes the jukebox controls, an inventory guide (which also doubles as a tracker for unlocking all albums), and a dialogue tracker which comes in extremely handy later in the game when customers start asking for more than one album with their vague hints. You can also just look at the album cover, the back of the album, and the liner notes, which also include information that you can use to decipher the customers’ clues. 

There are some minor puzzles as well. Packing up a large gift set in a box for delivery requires some tetris like placement skills. My favorite mini-game was during a performance at a bar with dodgy electricity. To prevent the circuit breaker from shutting the power off to the entire bar, you have to monitor the buggy equipment to make sure nothing is pulling more power than it should. 

Here I have gone through two paragraphs describing the gameplay. Let me emphasize that Wax Heads is largely an interactive novel. While you have to use your brain, pay attention to the info you gain, or just brute force your way through the albums on the display rack to find the one the customer is talking about, the star of the game is the story, which I will return to later.

Hand-Drawn Soul 

I loved the comic book aesthetic. The characters are hand-drawn. Their “speech” is delivered via text bubbles. Their facial expressions update based on their feelings or the topic that they are talking about. It’s simple, but effective, and all you need to get to know and want to help the characters. The store itself is also drawn beautifully. The albums and the decor put you right in a perfectly realized record store complete with a section of completely unrelated merch meant to boost revenue but never actually becomes part of the game. Even playing on my handheld, none of those details were difficult to spot nor diminished by the smaller screen. 

But, we’re in a music store, let’s talk about the music! Wax Heads was created by music lovers. They have created approximately 20-25 original songs by the same number of artists! They cover the popular music genres in England, where Wax Heads takes place. And the songs are good! Well, most of them are. I found myself queueing up the same handful on the jukebox after opening the store. Early in the game, only a few songs are available. In a lot of cases, I just let the lo-fi background music take over once it cycled through those songs.

I want to emphasize how impressed I was with the effort the game makers put into the original music. It was immersive and satisfying to enjoy music that is likely playing (genre-wise) in record stores across the country.

Final Verdict – Wax Heads

I don’t want to spoil anything, but the story is worth it. I will be honest when I say that I was ready for the ending to arrive; the game itself sticks around an hour or two longer than I would have liked. In addition, to build up the difficulty, some of the customers’ album clues are so vague in the final portion that some of the correct answers felt like guesses. But once the ending arrived, it was so heartfelt that my eagerness for the game to end melted away. Each character gets the resolution that they deserve. And we’re left with an overwhelming feeling of hope. Hope for music, hope for independent stores, and hope for honest music creation.

You don’t get good music without emotion or without living. AI and the over-production of our current pop stars are put on blast for being soulless. They might be good to dance to, but they don’t enrich our lives. As music goes, so does the rest of creativity. I am inspired to take a trip up to Slick Disc or over to Dearborn Music and support those among us who still have a soul. Long live vinyl! Long live analog music production!

To hear me talk more about Wax Heads, be sure to listen to the May 5th episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast.

This review is based on a PC copy of Wax Heads provided by Mark Allen PR for coverage purposes. As of this writing, the game is exclusive to that platform.