Hey Wax Heads,
We've got something a little bit different today. We wanted to cover the origins of Wax Heads, our inspirations and a bunch of behind the scenes, If you want to know a little bit more about us and the making of the game, read on...
What was the first spark that led to the idea of Wax Heads?
Murray: I’ve pretty much always been a big music fan (shock, horror). I grew up on a diet of Pink Floyd and Queen growing up, but from the age of 12 and buying my first album (Eminem - Marshall Mathers LP) I’ve had the music bug.
I would watch MTV2 and Kerrang TV and devour music videos and read all the ravings of my favourite bands when I was a teen, and as soon as I was able, I then started going to gigs, and then even playing in bands myself.
It’s probably no surprise that with this long interest, that it might one day overlap with my parallel passion for Video Games. I had long thought about how there weren't really a lot of games about music culturally. I mean there were games mechanically about music, in which you would do the act of performing music (i.e guitar hero), but there were very few games that explored why we love music and what music means to us.
(Disclaimer: There are more games in recent memory that have explored this, but at the original inception of Wax Heads it was a smaller pool.)
One of the first times I saw something actually capture that feeling was playing ‘Night In the Woods’ during the band mini game. The endearing appeal of getting to live in the skin of four friends playing in a band in their little town really resonated with me. I wanted to experience a game solely about that experience.
Before working on Wax Heads I actually had my first whack at making a game about music when working at Triple Topping, a Danish Game studio, where I pitched “Dead Pets Unleashed”, a game about being a demonic punk band trying to navigate the building pressures of adulthood and being in a band as you turn 30. I unfortunately didn’t get to see the game finish as I moved back to the UK to be closer to family for my kids.
So I felt like I had unfinished business with trying to articulate my love of music in games. I just didn’t know exactly how, especially already trying the “I used to be in a band route”. Whatever I did next had to be something that felt different from Dead Pets, but still allowed me to express my love for music.
Did the concept emerge during a game jam or during a more organic moment of inspiration?
Murray: The exact eureka moment for Wax Heads came when playing “Wilmot’s Warehouse”. It’s no secret that I love vinyl records, I’ve been collecting them since my mid 20s and so when I was playing Wilmot and looking at all these jazzy, little graphic tiles, I thought to myself “wouldn’t it be so cool if this was actually a record store and I was organising all different records / finding them to give to customers.
That was what sparked the idea of “game in a record store” - I just wasn’t sure how it would work mechanically. The first thought was to try and explore something procedurally generating and modular, but then I remembered I don’t have the brain to design that.
Instead I followed my love for Papers Please, and was inspired by the likes of Strange Horticulture / Coffee Talk / VA11 HA11 A to make a game that takes place in a record shop front, with logical deduction puzzles to figure out records to give out. (You know but it also includes fun writing and visually interesting characters).
I mocked up the first iteration of Wax Heads in Twine on my own as a proof of concept, with my thinking being that if my janky web text game is fun, then surely a more sophisticated version would be a lot more.
Luckily the proof of concept seemed to work, and even more luckily was strong enough for me to convince Rothio to take a punt and try working with me to make Wax Heads a reality, using her technical wizardry to lift my cobbled together word adventure into a living, breathing world.
Immediately from seeing Wax Heads playing in Godot, in an actual gaming interface, powered by Rothio’s coding magic, that was when we knew this game had real promise.
Rothio: When Murray came to me with the first concept of Wax Heads, which at that time was just some illustrations and an interactive dialogue to go with them, in my head I could already see how adding interactivity, movement, and life to each character and story was something I really wanted to do. I’ve been lucky to be part of this and help it grow into the universe it is today.
How did the title Wax Heads come about and were there earlier title names?
Murray: There’s a bit of secret lore here, but a lot of the names of projects come from my wife, Daisy. She coined the name “Wax Heads” early on, it was meant only as a placeholder but it sounded punchy and accurate, without appearing derivative and nothing else has come close to replacing it. So Wax Heads just stuck.
Daisy also named our game studio, “Patattie Games” (combining Spanish patatas and Scottish tatties together). So she’s our unofficial-official-naming exec.
Was there something about this kind of game that you want people to experience? Any shared appreciations?
With wanting to make Wax Heads, we wanted to create a game that really captures the endearing love of creativity. The way it makes you swell up inside when you hear a new song you fall in love with for the first time, or you discover a new band / artist / TV Show which is your current favourite and you just feel the need to tell someone about it.
Especially in an age where every day brings a new fresh discourse about AI and how impersonal and bland everything has become, we wanted to celebrate the beauty of all things music, something which is such a big part of the human experience, and is all around us.
We want people to find that everywhere in Wax Heads, in the plethora of visual art drawn, in the too-good-to-be-true soundtrack music, in the imagination of the bands and records, in the writing and care put into every character. We’ve crammed so much of our own genuine, unadulterated love for music, art, story and games that we want that sincerity to reach out through the game and hopefully encourage players to connect with their own relationship with creativity.
Were there any creative influences behind the game?
Murray: There’s quite an extensive list of influences that drive behind this game for me personally, so I’ll dish out some of the top picks in different categories:
Books: Please Kill Me / Kim Gordon: Girl in a band / Kathleen Hanna: Rebel Girl / Our Band Could Be Your Life
Film: Dig! (documentary) / Meet Me in The Bathroom (documentary) / The Punk Singer (Documentary) / High Fidelity / Daria (series) / American Movie
Visual: Scott Pilgrim, both from the comics and the recent animated series, has been a particularly strong influence, as a visual style and also a quality to which we’ve compared ourselves to throughout.
Lastly, the band The Replacements, they mean a lot to me and have this kind of underdog, plucky, world on your shoulders/against you vibe, they just remain a guiding light to this project.
How did you get to where you are now? Were there any "A-ha!" moments?
Murray: The biggest “A-ha” moment for me when making Wax Heads was when we iterated on the navigation of exploring the store when looking for a record.
Originally the plan was to have just two different record shelves you swapped between, devoid of any real sense of place. But instead we created a movement system that means you actually move between rooms in the store, giving spaces character, allowing more opportunity for personality and detail, the store becomes intimately known.
As soon as we implemented it in the game, I could feel Repeater Records actually coming to life and it being somewhere I wanted to spend time in.
Rothio: I think the most important moment I remember was when I designed all the interaction for the controller. The game was already set up to work with the mouse, but we had to redesign all the controls so navigating the UI with the controller was possible, which is really complex and has many layers of interfaces stacked on top of each other. As someone who hates virtual cursors when playing with a controller, I wanted to create a ui navigation flow specifically for the controller. The cool thing is that not only did we manage to create really solid controller support and adapt all the functionality we already had, but it also improved the layout of the different elements we had designed for the mouse.
Is there something you've always wanted where only Wax Heads really scratches that itch?
Murray: A perfect excuse for me to nerd out about music as much as I want but for it to be actually substantial to the project and world I’m building. Nothing else can scratch that itch, trust me I’ve tried!
Rothio: Making a game that anyone can play, so even people who aren’t used to playing and just want to enjoy the game at their own pace can do it, while those who are more used to this kind of format still find it interesting. It’s the same with the music. Murray has made a game that people who are really into music will enjoy because of all the references and details, but people who aren’t that deep into it can still enjoy the characters, the stories, and the culture that comes through the music.
I think we’ve created the perfect experience for that, and I can’t imagine a better game for it.
Take care and keep on spinning 💿
Murray & Rothio <3
