Wax Heads is a gorgeous, short, beautiful game built around a simple and cozy gameplay loop. It captures the spirit of your local record shop and uses its cast of colorful characters to tell a confined, low-stakes story that will stay with you regardless. It’s a perfect game for those looking for a small, comfortable narrative experience, and the price is hard to argue with.

Wax Heads is an impressive achievement. It delivers a great mix of varied music, great record graphical design, exquisite fictional critical texts, and narrative. The universe built around Repeater Records is a lovely one, filled with cool customers and interesting co-workers. Make sure to unlock and play all the songs that were specifically recorded for the game. While the core gameplay loop of using a short prompt to find the best record for each character is great, it can become somewhat repetitive. Playing two or, at most, three days in one session is the go-to move. Wax Heads is a great example of how a two-person team can deliver a great game, infused with passion and packing great songs.

The album-identification tasks are fun little puzzles, but they’re also invitations to empathy.