Patattie Games is made up of Rocio “Rothio” Tomé (creative technical director) and Murray Somerwolff (creative director), and they have just released their debut game, Wax Heads. A hand-drawn journey into the ins and outs of running a record store, through a mixture of simulation and puzzle gameplay.
They have both been kind enough to answer some questions about music, community, and what makes Wax Heads special.
Wax Heads is “cozy-punk” full of joy, friendship, and amazing music; we absolutely loved it here at the Gamer Social Club.
Check out the review to get our thoughts on Wax Heads.
First off, congratulations on Wax Heads. I had an incredible time playing through it; in fact, I played through the whole thing in two sittings.
Thank you so much for spending your time answering some quick questions. I’m sure you are busy.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and what you do as creative director of Patattie Games?
Murray: Hey, I’m Murray Somerwolff, I started out as an illustrator and have now been working in games for about 9 years, previously working on games like Spitkiss, Welcome to Elk and Dead Pets: A punk slice of life, before forming Patattie Games with Rothio. As creative director on Wax Heads, my main responsibilities are art/writing/design and overseeing the creative roles in the production.
Rothio: Hi I’m Rothio Tome and I too have been working in games for around 9 years, although my background is more technical. I’ve worked previously at big simulation companies, at Unity as a Developer Support Engineer and made a bunch of creative personal projects that are on itch.io. On Wax Heads I was creative technical director, so doing the programming/design and some SFX.
This is a very important question: Who is your favorite villain? And why? It doesn’t have to be gaming-related.
Murray: I’ve got twin boys who are about to turn 5 and they are SUPER into villains right now. (They dressed up as a burglar and crime boss for “what would you like to be when you grow up day” – don’t ask.) So, with this question I can only hear their answers in my head, so in honour of them I’m going to choose Muska from the Laputa: Castle in the Sky and The Sheriff of Nottingham from Robin Hood.
Rothio: It has to be GLaDOS from Portal. It’s one of my all time favourite games and I love how you spend the whole game with her, like she’s evil but also really funny. (And the song at the end Jonathan Coulton is just *chef’s kiss*.)
What was the original spark for Wax Heads?
Murray: So I’ve always been a music nerd; I’ve played in bands, gone to countless gigs, and (STILL) buy too many records. And unsurprisingly I’ve always been into video games, and since working as an indie dev, I’ve had this long gnawing interest to try and find a way to express my love of music in games that didn’t revolve around performing it. But the spark for Wax Heads happened unexpectedly while I was playing Wilmot’s Warehouse, I was looking at all the beautiful abstract geometric squares, and thought what if these were records in a record store? Then it was like the clouds parted and a ray of sun beamed into my head and my brain screamed: “A RECORD STORE!? That’s the perfect premise for a game about music!”
The hand-drawn style is very unique, and it reminds me of collecting stickers as a kid. What were some of the influences that shaped that style?
Murray: I grew up on a healthy diet of 90s cartoons, but what made the biggest impact on Wax Heads was Bryan Lee O’Malley’s, Scott Pilgrim comics. I was looking for references to help give Wax Heads a strong identity and when my eyes stopped on my Scott Pilgrim comics, I knew that was the right inspiration to take. It’s chunky, dynamic and boldly pops off the page.
But I also wanna shout out the sticker element you’re talking about. We use these off-white outlines on the customers that totally feel like stickers and the idea came directly from Tangle Tower, by SFB games. Their use of a white outline to embolden the character was a perfect example for how to make the customers stand out in such dense record store backgrounds.
Did the art style shape the storytelling,or did the story come first?
Murray: It’s a bit of both? In the first instance the art style definitely came first and I started drawing characters who invoked ideas of what their background and stories were. But then once the world was constructed, the story became a driving force for the game. It’s like a feedback loop, when I’m drawing I’m getting inspired for storytelling and when I’m writing I’m thinking of new things that will look awesome to draw.
As someone who has worked in a record store for many years, I think you got it eerily right about how customers interact with you and the weird questions and information they present. How did you come up with the characters and their interests? Are any of them based on real people?
Murray: That’s very validating to hear! I like to think a big part of the believability of the characters is because we’ve worked a bunch of different people facing jobs . I’ve worked in supermarkets, hospitality, schools and other odds and sods jobs where I feel I’ve met a wide array of eccentric people, so I’ve definitely taken some of them and thought about what kind of music they would like.
Rothio: And on my side I’m actually a trained psychologist, and worked many years in people facing jobs, so thinking about people comes very natural. I even worked in a autopsy technician, but I guess that part was less helpful with the record store customers haha. We do have some very real people in the game though. One of the customers is Murray’s wife and kids and one of the artists is sung by his father-in-law and looks like him too (Teddy Tom). Importantly for me we have my mother-in-law in the game, she was a big fan of the game but passed away during development, so I asked Murray if we could have her appear and that was something really special.
With Wax Heads revolving a lot around music, what genre do you mainly listen to? I’m into the heaviest metal you can dream of, and it’s often not included in music talks, so it was great to see it included!
Murray: Ha that’s great, I used to be a huge metal head when I was a teen, growling and singing in my bedroom along to The Bled and Spineshank. (Fun fact it’s me singing on the Jarhead track, which is our metal song off the Wax Heads OST.)
If I had to choose one, my comfort genre is post-punk, bands like Gang of Four, The Replacements, Fugazi, Priests, Mannequin Pussy and Minutemen?
Rothio: Admittedly I’m not as much of a music nerd as Murray, but when I’m choosing to listen to music I usually go for Spanish and Italian indie rock bands, or singer / songwriters like iosonouncane, hmm or maybe he’s more indie electronic music? Haha maybe I’m not really good with genres.
Was it difficult to understand the nuances of the different genres and what makes the fans? Especially the ones you’re not really into?
Murray: Hmm it’s a good question. I would say it wasn’t that it was necessarily difficult, more that I recognised in certain genres I had a smaller pool of references to pull from, which meant I had to be more considered with what I was trying to say and look for supporting reference material.
I think the one thing that helped was, always trying to find a personal connection, so I was never inventing story ideas out of thin air, but instead trying to base on it something I had seen or experienced or felt, even if that was slightly abstract.
How do you think younger players who’ve never experienced record stores will connect with the game?
Rothio: Well in truth, I myself am not a regular visitor of record stores, so I found myself to be a good surrogate of how it feels to play the game without having the same background as Murray. I think through the art and the stories of the customers is what will connect with younger players. Indeed, it’s what made me fall in love with the idea when Murray pitched it to me. I loved getting to know the customers and finding what they were looking for.
With so much emphasis on audio and communication, did you ever think about adding spoken dialogue?
Murray: I think considering the scope and how much attention I wanted the soundtrack to get, I think early on I knew that spoken dialogue was going to be out of scope. I actually got really good advice from Adam Vian from SFB Games (Tangle Tower, Crow Country), because they have excellent voice acting on Tangle Tower, and I asked him about it and he helped illustrate how much consideration goes into it.
Knowing the amount of customers we were going to end up with and how important the soundtrack was going to be, it made sense for our priorities to stay on the other parts of the game.
(Although one of the next games we’re considering making, I 100% want to have VO!)
With so many records and customers, did you ever think, “This is getting too big”? How did you decide on the length and number of interactions in each day?
Murray: Yeah I’m trying to think… I think vibing it out mostly. I think I knew that if we had over 100 records (I think in the game we have around 80?) we would start to slip into losing the ability to retain information or attachments to the bands / albums we were putting in there.
What really helped was the original demo we made in April 2024. It initially had 5 customers and along with the flyer poster minigame, it lasted on average 20-30 minutes playtime. It felt like a good template to copy for the rest of the game.
Then for scoping out the rest of the game, we knew we had some twists and turns we wanted to put in there, so there needed to be an appropriate build up and pacing between those, to make sure the story didn’t feel too rushed. I think as we mapped out the 5 chapters, it felt like if we pushed it any longer than what it was, it would be starting to outstay its welcome. There was a natural conclusion to wrapping up at the end of Side E.
(But annoyingly it did give us an odd number for the metaphor of chapters being record sides, so in my head the credits count as Side F…)
If you could go back to the start of development, what would you tell yourself?
Rothio: Oh gosh, let me think. Maybe that I know that it’ll be longer run than you think, and it will have quite stressful moments so remember to be kind to yourself, but don’t worry – it’s going to be worth it
Do you have anything you want to add?
Both: Just to give kudos to our dev team of collaborators who helped make Wax Heads what it is:
Gina Loughlin – Audio / Composer
Mairi Nolan – Puzzle Design
Malindy Hetfeld – Writer
Javier Pérez Rico – Programming / Porting
Matt Johns – Art
Balázs Rónyai – Art / Animation
All talented, kind and inspiring individuals who we’re grateful for.
Thank you so much for your time, and as I said at the start, Wax Heads is brilliant! You and the team should be proud.
I’d like to thank Murray and Rothio for taking the time to answer my questions and share a little bit about the thought process that goes into something like Wax Heads.
Wax Heads is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo.
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