Salls Spa Game | CellularHealthBeauty

Salls Spa Game

Parents need to know that this time-management game is aimed at tween and teen girls but anyone can play. Players build a beauty spa empire, starting with one shop where they help Sally, the proprietor, juggle her customers.

Things can get hectic down at Sally's Spa, a cute tap-and-drag game where the goal is to expand. Make people wait too long for their sauna or facial and they get huffy and walk out. Cater to every whim and attract famous clientele. This game keeps kids on their toes, tapping, dragging, and dropping through 50 levels. The animations are very simple but pretty. It might not be brain surgery, but Sally's Spa is fun.

When a customer is ready to change seats, they will have a colored station appear above their head. When this is the case, simply tap them and they will move to their desired station by themselves, assuming there is at least one unoccupied chair. Sally does not need to walk over and escort them, but she will have to go activate the station until you've purchased the station assistants. Some stations have a sort of minigame (a pop up where you click through options until the customer is happy) that you will have to play to get past, which can increase, decrease, or not affect the amount of hearts above a customer's head. If you select an option that makes the customer unhappy, they will lose a heart. If you choose an option that makes them smile mildly or look neutral, their hearts will not be affected. If you choose an option that makes them smile or wink, they will gain a heart.

The "face" chairs (yellow) will always have a minigame, for face masks and/or eyebrow contouring. Customers will usually want both of these as the levels go on, tying the yellow chairs up for quite awhile if Sally isn't on top of things. This is where I usually got hung up when things were busy, so make sure you're constantly emptying the yellow chairs.

The massage tables (orange) want a massage, which is done by Sally or the massage assistant (unlockable later on in the game). Sometimes the customer will want a hot stone massage, only available from Sally, requiring another minigame where you must swap stones that are in the wrong place on the customer's back. This game is a little confusing at first. The stones always belong in the same place and usually just two will be swapped. You will just want to swap them back into place. Make sure you never move a stone to an incorrect place, even just for a moment, as the minigame will be failed and the customer will lose a heart. If done successfully, the customer will gain a heart. Later on in the levels, sometimes you will have to swap two sets of stones, as all four will be in the wrong place, but early on, you'll only need to swap two, finishing the minigame in one movement. Succeed at this minigame for 50 customers (easily achievable before finishing your Normal playthrough) to unlock:

Each level or so for awhile, you'll be introduced to a new type of customer. Some customers are impatient, some very patient; some low tippers while others tip quite well. The only customer that should give you trouble is the elderly couple. They appear several levels into the game and must do everything together, meaning instead of just one seat open at each station, they will need two, and they will need to be waited on together. Still, the game will tell you this and you'll never be sprung a customer the game hasn't warned you about.

While playing Laguna Beach, you'll be introduced to the Natural Products station. Just pay attention to the need levels Nell gives you at the beginning of each level to choose the products most likely to sell that day. If you choose something that customers are not interested in, she will warn you and give you opportunity to remove it from the shelf before proceeding. This doesn't matter much as far as gameplay goes, and does not affect the Perfect achievement or much else, but go ahead and sell products anyway to work toward:

If you're stocking your Natural Products shelf each level and upgrading the shelf as recommended by the game, you should get this before finishing the Normal story mode. Best Seller might take a little longer, but is cumulative between Normal and Hard modes, so just keep stocking Natural Products until it unlocks. After you have both of these achievements, there is no need to continue stocking Natural Products.

You will want Perfect scores on each level in Normal or Hard, but you won't be able to do this at first. For the most part, this just means making sure all customers leave with 5 full hearts above their heads. However, in the last three or so levels of the game, you'll have to make way for 19, 20, and 21 customers respectively (these numbers may vary slightly, but that was what came up for me). This means you have to go very fast. Without being exceptionally speedy, I averaged 17-19 customers per round. The last few levels may take several attempts to Perfect, but I recommend doing this before moving on to Hard mode. To begin earning Perfect scores, you will need to unlock some upgrades for the spa, so in the beginning, just focus on completing levels. After you've completed your first level with a Perfect score, you will unlock:

The baths (green) will need to be activated like the sauna, but also have the occasional minigame in which Sally chooses an appropriate bath bomb for the customer. Just like with the others, you're aiming for the open-mouthed smile, the wink, or the old man's jovial laughing face. Like the others, a successful bath bomb choice will grant the customer a heart. A bad bath bomb choice will remove a heart. A so-so bath bomb choice is neutral.

The mani/pedi chairs (purple) are like the yellow chairs in that they will always require minigames. This time, there are four choices of minigame, and up to two can be chosen by any individual customer: clip fingernails, clip toenails, color-match fingernails, and color-match toenails. The clipping minigame is easy--just tap the nails that are longer and have jagged edges. The color-match is a bit harder. The customer has their nails painted, but one nail doesn't match! You need to use the color slider to select the color of their nails, making the 5th finger or toe match perfectly. A perfect match will earn a heart, a bad match will lose a heart, and sometimes a match will be close (say, light green, but not quite the exact shade--sometimes it's hard to tell), which will garner a neutral reaction from the customer.

Keep it up and you'll be finished with the Luxury Cruiser in no time, opening Sally's final upgrade--Fuji! Now things get tough. This is approaching the point where you'll have to start clearing a certain number of customers per level to satisfy Perfect requirements. Day 24 seemed to require 19 or 20 customers and Day 25 needed 21, which will likely take several attempts to get into your stride. That said, your equipment is all the same. You should have nearly everything upgraded now, except for the tea/cashier assistant that we're avoiding, and your spa should be a dream for any customer. Focus on keeping the yellow and purple chairs clear, as they will always require minigames. Try to manage so that you clear out chairs that are beside each other, to keep from getting elderly couples stuck in your waiting chairs. You want to always have one waiting chair open, so that you can always have a new customer coming to sit down. As long as there is room for them to come sit, the game will send you as many customers as the level requires.

Now select Start and Hard. You'll be back at square one and it might take a bit to get back into the groove of having so few upgrades. Just play through like you did before, free to ignore the Natural Products this time around. Everything plays pretty much the same except customers enter the salon with fewer hearts. Utilize tea and magazines, take the time to pick the best options for them in minigames, and be as quick as you can. Again, we're shooting for Perfect on every level.

Sally's Spa (or as it is listed in the Marketplace, Sallys Spa) is the sequel to Sally's Salon, previously available on Xbox Live in an 'LE' (Luxury Edition) version which took the price to £3.99. Spa is a slightly less expensive £2.99, so is it obviously less luxurious. Unfortunately yes, this is an Xbox Live title that feels more like a contractual obligation than a game title that someone has developed with love and enthusiasm.

The format is exactly the same as the previous title, Sally's Salon, but that's where the similarities end. At a basic level the graphics are different and you have different services to manage, but that's not the main difference - what you'll recognise is that Sally's Spa manages to just miss the mark in so many areas that the sum of all these tiny errors is an uninspiring game with a poor relation to the Windows Phone environment, and not at all a patch on its prequel.

Somewhere in the All About Windows Phone office, Steve is trying to work out if we should leave the title as "Sallys Spa" or change it to "Sally's Spa" in the text. That might seem like a jokey point, but if the developers can't get the title right, what does that say about the rest of the game?

The faults continue on the menu screen. Not all the menu options fit on the screen, so you need to scroll through them. However, once you start to scroll you realise that you are scrolling because the menu is short by half the hight of one menu option. Rather than increase the screen area for the menu to gain a few more pixels, Gamehouse add in a scrolling system - and an inelegant one at that, with the scroll bar on the opposite side of the screen. It's ugly, it's not needed, and it sets the tone for the rest of the game.

Unlike Sally's Salon, Sally's Spa has you scrolling around the screen to see every part of your spa, and that includes seeing what customers want. It's frustrating that the game has added this scroll mechanic, Sally's Salon managed fine without it. A game relying on reactions and movement benefits from continuity of locations of the various spa stations. Why the graphics could not have been shrunk slightly to make this a single screen game I have no idea. 2b1af7f3a8