I remember many moons ago visiting my favorite local video game store and entering into a discussion with one of the sales people about what he was currently playing. He answered that his life was filled with so many things at the moment that he found that he was spending less and less time playing with video games and when he did find the time, the only thing he could play was anything related to Street Fighter II in short thirty minute playing sessions. I pitied the guy back then thinking it would never happen to me. Of course, I was wrong.

I still manage to find the time to play video games albeit in much lower quantities than “back in the good old days.” Also, I have to admit, that it’s getting harder and harder to play in long gaming sessions. Gone are the days when I could come back home, eat dinner and fire up the video game console or PC and play from 6pm to midnight. Sure, it might happen but it’s about as rare an occasion as a complete solar eclipse happening near my house.

However, one area where I never expected to find gaming sessions on the rise is during my free time while I am out of the house. Whether it be waiting for my wife while she shops to taking a break at work I’ve found that there’s actually plenty of time to indulge in, shudder, casual gaming. These play sessions don’t particularly last long, say 10-20 minutes so the games themselves can’t exactly be epic role-playing adventures like Final Fantasy 7. Rather, they are designed to be quick and dirty. Play a round or two and then save and move on with your life.

I rarely take my PSP or DS out with me unless I’m going on a nice long airplane ride around the world but the one place I never thought I’d find quality gaming is my cell phone. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that my current model is Apple’s 3G iPhone. I previously dabbled in cell phone gaming with the abortive failure called the Nokia Ngage and while I somewhat enjoyed a few games (long live Pocket Kingdom!) the system itself was clunky and stiff.

Enter the iPhone. While I’m still not entirely convinced with iPhone gaming – it just doesn’t work in my opinion for certain genres – there are some games which are surprisingly fun although I have to say, just about none I’ve played are very difficult. I’m not bragging but it’s easy to see that developers have not made terribly difficult games as they are trying to appeal to a much broader audience than hardcore gamers.

One such game that has recently surprised me is Sally’s Salon by Real Networks where you control an up and coming hairstylist, appropriately named Sally, who attempts to expand her salon franchises to multiple cities. Much like the hit Diner Dash, Sally’s Salon is all about how you manage your daily tasks and how you successfully control the flow of customers who come into your store.

A basic example would be moving your customers from the waiting area to the washing stations. From there you move them to the stylist station then to the hairdryer and later in the game to more specialized areas to apply suntan and fingernail polish. Controls are super intuitive. Since this is the iPhone everything is controlled with light touches of your fingertips onto the touchscreen. To move a customer you simply click once on them and then click where you want them moved. Once at their new location you must click on Sally herself to move to the customer and perform her job like trimming and then cutting their hair.

The game inserts a couple of extra wrinkles to add some needed tension to the whole ordeal. Each customer has a bar of hearts above their heads indicating how happy they are with their whole experience. The more hearts they have the happier they are but also the more they’ll tip once they arrive at the cashier. If they lose all their hearts the customer will storm out leaving Sally with no money at all.

These virtual customers lose hearts if they wait too long at any given station or if you choose the wrong styles for them. For instance, once a customer is sitting in the hairstyling seat you are presented with many choices of cut. Each cut has a rating on them that shows whether that particular customer likes or hates it. If you chose the right one the customer will be pleased and their heart level will increase. Conversely, make a mistake and give them a style they despise will cause them to lose a heart.

This might sound pretty easy but it becomes frantic at the higher levels when you are pressed for time and are rushing to move people in and out of stations as it’s easy in these situations to hit the wrong style. Another element that adds difficulty is that different types of customers seem to lose hearts faster such as the Elvis impersonator who, in my games, seemed to perpetually be angry. This forces you to try and service them first in order to get them through the various areas as fast as possible.

After every successful day at work you are given a simple tally of how much money you made. If you earned equal or more money than the minimum amount set for the level you are on you get to play the following day. If not, you have to once again repeat the same day. After successful days you are given the opportunity to purchase upgrades to your salon. These range from hiring staff to help you do various tasks such as blow drying to purchasing nicer, more comfortable chairs in order to keep your clientele happier and slow down their loss of hearts.

The game itself has some pleasant hand-drawn 2-D sprites and graphics and there’s no slow down whatsoever. There is a bit of an irritant in that as your salon grows in size you have to constantly be swiping your finger back and forth since the room spans greater than the sides of the phone. I know on the PC this is not an issue as the screen is obviously big enough to accommodate the whole size of the room but the iPhone’s restrictive screen makes this not possible. Since you have to move Sally all over the salon there were times when I had to scroll left and right where I accidentally tapped a customer to move somewhere I did not want which was not exactly fun.

A bigger issue for me, and I alluded to this earlier, is that the game is not very difficult. I think I only had to repeat one day once. Also, since I was literally blowing through the game with ease, I bought all the salon upgrades long before I got to the final levels. It’s a bit of a downer to not be able to buy anything new even though I have oodles of cash on hand.

Overall Sally’s Salon is the very definition of casual gaming – short and sweet. For me though there’s not much incentive to play it all over again as I’m not one of those gamers obsessed with besting my personal high-score. Still for $4.99 this is a keeper. (It's currently on sale for $0.99 which is an even better deal).

*** out of ****

Developer: RealNetworks Inc.
Released: November 3, 2008
Version: 1.1.3
Size: 7.8 MB