If you've been playing a lot of casual games lately, Sally's Salon might not be something entirely new. There have been a slew of games in which you need to multitask and manage your environment, each packaged just slightly different than the other to try and keep things fresh. In Sally's Salon, Sally's dream is to have a coast-to-coast salon chain of her own. After many years of saving money and training, she finally has opened her first salon in a mall. This is Sally's first step as she continually moves to bigger and better locations. You help Sally with her day-to-day job of making sure her customers are happy and that they come in and get the haircut they want.
As the customers start pouring in, your job is to click and drag them to the right station, then click again to have Sally work on them. They will come in with a thought bubble over their head to indicate what they're looking for. There are colored chairs to indicate what kind of services Sally provides. You start with just three types of chairs: The blue chair is your washing station; the yellow is your haircut/dye station; and the orange is for blow-drying. Eventually, you will have stations for other services, such as manicures and eye-brow waxing.
Sally's Salon is fairly fast-paced as the customers keep coming in, so there is always something to do. They have a heart meter to indicate how happy they are, and it'll go down if you let them wait too long. At the cutting/dye station, you scroll through several hairstyles, and by the expression on the customer's face, you decide which haircut suits them best. By giving them the best haircut, you'll add another heart to their happiness meter. Once the customer is done, you have to run back to the cash register to get paid, and making them wait in line will eat into your tip.
In between stages, the money you've earned will allow you to go shopping. You can buy upgraded stations, better outfits for Sally, magazines, a coffee maker and candles, all to make life easier on Sally. You also can hire some help to aid in such simple tasks as washing, drying or even making coffee. Things like coffee, candles and magazines will help keep the clients happy. Upgraded equipment will make things more efficient; even new outfits are meant to help Sally move faster. This is the only part that really keeps you going, as you try to earn as much money as you can to upgrade everything. Once you've purchased everything there is to buy, there really isn't much sense in continuing except to just make it to the end.
The game is relatively easy, and you'll find yourself making enough money to hit expert ranking to maximize your dollar. Things do progressively get more hectic, but it's the same idea throughout the 10 locations, which comes out to be 50 levels.
Visually, the game isn't making much of an achievement, but for this type of game, it doesn't matter as much. Sally's Salon is virtually a clone of all the other casual games that involves multitasking, clicking and satisfying customers that all look the same. As you go on, new customers will arrive — some with more patience than others.
Sally's Salon is fun but only if you're in the mood to play this type of game. Otherwise, it's very repetitive, and if you've played a lot of the recent casual games, this one will be very similar. These games are fun to play once in awhile, because you're really not doing anything new, and if you wait long enough, it'll seem fresh and new again.
I am a Canadian living in California with my husband and my precious baby Bailey (95lbs of labrador fun). I work full time and go to school, so finding the time to play video games is tough. I still manage to sneak some time in, whether it's playing on my GBA while I wait in line or sitting in the back seat of my car so I can use our dvd player to play the Gamecube on long trips. I've always been fairly decent at playing games to give my younger brother some competition. I started at the early age of 6 when I inherited an Atari 2600. I played any computer game I could get my hands on during those Commodore 64 days. Now I'll play anything from RPGs to first person shooters, racing games or basically anything that's fun and allows me to play with at least 3 other people.
