2026 has already been a banging year for video games, with everything from huge open worlds to explore down to more intimate indie experiences. If you’ve not read our Wax Heads preview, it left quite the impression on me, with a soundtrack I’m almost guaranteed to be listening to for the rest of the year.
As a quick recap, Wax Heads is a cosypunk narrative sim where you take on the role of a new worker in Repeater Records, an incredibly cool record shop, and your job is to listen to customers, understand what kind of music they want and then find the perfect record for them. This is all set to the backdrop of a David vs. Goliath type story, as “The Man” tries to swoop in and take over Repeater Records.
The demo really grabbed me and I’m looking forward to seeing where the story goes. Recently, Murray Somerwolff, one half of Patattie Games and Creative Director on Wax Heads, kindly took the time to answer a few burning questions I had about the game.
Is Repeater Records inspired by a particular real life record store?
Yes and no. A lot of what’s in Wax Heads is inspired by a mix of blurry memories, as we didn’t want anything to feel like an uncanny imitation, and instead hope that Repeater Records feels like a real place of its own.
That being said, record stores that have definitely left an impression on me are Flashback Records in London, Sound Station in Copenhagen and Rough Trade in Nottingham.
(And for those curious, the name of the store, Repeater, comes from the Fugazi album “Repeater” which a friend bought me for my 19th birthday. I used to be a real metalhead and hearing something so raw and rhythmic was like nothing I had heard before!)
If so, was the kooky cast of customers inspired by real life record store customers you encountered? Or do some of those characters represent members of the development team?
It’s a bit of a hybrid, we have over 60+ characters so the genesis of them varies. Both myself and Rothio have worked a variety of different jobs and have met a lot of strange and wonderful people, so there is absolutely some of that experience coming in. Then sometimes characters will just kinda come to life through me doodling, I’ll draw a character and suddenly you can just imagine their personality and tone. Other times, there has been a puzzle idea which necessitates a character to be a certain type, which then allows you to exaggerate and inform them that way.
There is a little bit of meta play in there too, my wife and kids appear as themselves as customers and Rothio’s partner’s mother, who sadly passed during development, appears in the store in memory of her.
(Plus my father-in-law sings on a song as an artist in the game, and when you meet this character I just based the visuals on him too, because why not haha.)
Obviously record shops aren’t quite as common as they used to be, how does Wax Heads capture the spirit and community they built and make it appeal to a generation of people who never really experienced them.
It’s an interesting question – I like to think it’s because rather than get hung up on the technical details of being a record store, we focus on the magic of music. The characters who come into the store; talk about bands they love, a song they can’t get out of their head, an album which makes them think of a passed loved one or about finding a shared experience between siblings.
The record store acts as a hub to house all those different expressions, and I think focusing on the way that music forges connections between us makes it universal?
Community comes from being able to share a vocabulary together, in Wax Heads we hoped to create
a place of community around celebrating art, about music that makes you move, laugh and cry. We hope that appeals to anyone, even if they don’t physically own a record player.
I really loved seeing the pub setting in the demo as it felt like a really authentic slice of Britishness. How were environments like this built to feel both real and distinctly British?
Ha I’m glad! It’s a similar answer to the first question and how we made Repeater Records, it comes from mashing a cocktail of memories and feelings together. Especially living in London in my 20s, I would go to, watch bands and play at a lot of different pubs – so I think that is very much baked into what I wanted to express when putting the Apple Bed into the game (which is named after a Sparklehorse song!).
Can you tell us more about the types of artists and music we’ll hear throughout the game?
It’s a real mix! Initially I loved the idea of being able to hear every band in the game, but since there’s over 70+ fictional albums in the game, that felt a little bit like madness. Instead we devised a system where each in-game day, you are given a new song by a band from the game to listen to – it makes it feel like a real treat to wonder what song you’ll hear next. We have everything from slick pop anthems and celtic folk to bratty punk, metal and rap.
The soundtrack has over 30+ songs, most of which are composed by our insanely talented composer Gina Loughlin, and a lot are sung by close friends and family (and even some by the dev team too). Then there’s a few guest tracks that I feel really privileged to have in the game, including an awesome rap by Xalavier Nelson Jr (Strange Scaffold) and RJ Lake (Unbeatable)!
What do you want players to do after they play Wax Heads? Is the aim to tell a story and inspire them to explore new music genres?
More than anything I want to inspire people to enjoy… enjoying things? Working creatively now is so haphazard between all the; AI, layoffs, unsustainable economic models (Spotify etc) and an ever increasing array of cost of living crises, so it feels more important than ever to celebrate and support artists and human made things. Find joy in the art that people are making, champion it, tell them and others how it makes you feel, then support them however you can! Music and art are magic and if we can make people go away with that, that would be pretty damn cool.
Wax Heads releases on 5 May for PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.
