Sally's Salon

Microsoft Windows

Starting off, Sally starts in a small salon in a mall.

Sally's Salon is another casual game and borrows a great deal from Diner Dash, one of the most successful casual games ever. In fact, it is probably most instructive to describe compared to Diner Dash than as a game unto itself. So that's what I'm going to do. So, sorry if you haven't played Diner Dash, you may be lost. But, you can always download and play the demo.

I've got to admit, the reason I played this in the first place is that my wife is "in the business." I played it to see if she might enjoy it. But I quickly got hooked myself. Joan hasn't played it yet.

On the surface, Sally's Salon (SS) is very similar to Diner Dash (DD). The biggest changes are the refined graphics of SS and the gameplay. I really hated the graphics in DD, and had little empathy for the protagonist of the game, the noseless Flo. SS, however, has several graphically pleasing characters, complete with noses. The rest of the graphics are more refined as well. The graphics are still cartoonish, but not nearly as haphazard as those of DD.

Sally progresses to classier locations as she gets more experience.

Gameplay-wise, the player does very similar things in SS as they do in DD. In DD, the player's goal is to get guests through a restaurant as fast as possible. SS's goal is similar, but the player must move customers from station to station in the salon (it's easy, just pick them up and drop them where you want them). The salon visit consists of mostly hair services (no bikini waxes or massages here), but after a while also includes services such as eyebrow tweezing. After each day of work, the player is given the option to buy new items or upgrades, similar to in DD where Flo upgraded the restaurant between stages. And as in DD, where Flo moved to more upscale restaurants, so does Sally, moving to more exclusive Salons.

Sally gets to shop for upgrades between levels.

One of my biggest frustrations with DD was that Flo didn't have the brains to think of hiring help. The player had to attend to every table oneself. And then, when Flo is working as fast as possible, instead of hiring another waiter (or waitress—waitperson?), she adds more tables! After a certain point in DD, all that happens is that gameplay goes faster than it's possible to keep up with. SS solves this problem. Sally can hire help. And while it's not cheap, it can be done and they, not surprisingly, lighten the workload quite a bit, so the player, as Sally, can concentrate on specialties, like dying, cutting and tweezing. Just when I got to the point of frustration with having to do a certain activity, I'd see that I could hire someone to do it for me.

Also, with DD, the player didn't have much say in what got purchased between stages: new tables, new wallpaper, new doors. It was already determined for the player by Flo. The player was just told what they were shooting for and had to work hard to meet the goal. With SS, however, the player has all the say in what gets purchased between days. After each day of work, the player is presented with a multitude of upgrades for the salon: additional chairs, upgraded equipment, assistants for various salon stations.

There are a couple of downsides to the game. First, the player has to choose which cut to give a customer. While I thought this was cute the first time I did it, it quickly got repetitive and seemed pointless. It consists of showing the customer with a hairstyle and you press a button to cycle through various styles. When you find one where the customer is smiling, you select that cut and perform it on them. This was fine the first few times, but soon became irritating. I mean, there is no challenge in it, all you do is rip through the portraits until you find them smiling. And worse, the window to do this usually pops up right when I'm doing something else. The color selection feature for dying services is nearly identical.

As she progresses, Sally moves on to classier and classier salons.

One other "feature" I found frustrating is the player has to hand customers magazines to read. I've been to hair stylists and barbers many times in my life (not anymore, however, because I'm married to the awesome hair stylist wife!) and no one has never handed me a magazine. In fact, I think I'd be offended if someone did. I just reached over a got it myself. And in the game, the customers are sitting there with the magazines right there in front of them, but they don't have the initiative to pick one up themselves. You can even upgrade the magazines (so you get more copies), but the customers will never pick one up themselves. I really wish this part of the game was automated.

There are other parts of the game I could complain about, like having to go from station to station, but, really, that is the game. Yeah, it's hard from time to time, but that's the whole point. Negatives notwithstanding, this is a nice little casual game, one that'll keep you occupied for those few minutes when the kids and the spouse leave you alone. Also I'd say the replay value is about average, since you can choose different items to buy between stages. The replay value is higher than Diner Dash, to be certain.

A nice feature of this game is its primary delivery mechanism: it completely downloadable. You download the whole thing to play the demo. If you like it, all you do is pay a small fee ($19.95 last time I checked) and you get a code to "unlock" the full game. Nice, quick, easy.

UPDATE: When I originally posted this review, I had only played the game about halfway through. Unfortunately, after that point, the game quickly falls apart. Up until about halfway into the game, Sally can keep buying upgrades, assistants and other enhancements to her salon. But after about halfway through all the levels, even the average player will have already purchased and upgraded everything possible. After that, the game is just a rush against the clock to get through as many customers as possible—the least compelling element of any Diner Dash clone. And the two things I wanted to buy the most—namely, personnel to man the face and nail stations—aren't available. Though Sally can hire flunkies to (a) wash hair and (b) dry (blow out) hair, she can't hire anyone to paint clients nails and tweeze their eyebrows? Though she is eventually the hairdresser of the Hollywood stars, she still has to man the menial stations herself? I just don't understand this design decision at all. All I can figure is that the game was a rush job and features had to be cut. Unfortunately, they cut the features that would make this game really shine and more replayable.