Spa Mania review

Overview

Spa Mania is a time management game in which you have to manage a beauty spa. The game starts with your character, a young woman called Jade, protesting the testing of cosmetics on animals in front of Dubois Cosmentic Labs. The owner of Dubois Cosmetics pulls up in front of the building, and they have an argument. Jade then decides to learn all she can about beauty treatments and open her own nature-friendly beauty spa.

How to play

Jade’s first task will be to work in her friend’s spa. Customers will come in and you will have to move them wherever they need to go by clicking and dragging them. Each level has an amount of earnings you must meet in order to proceed - to earn as much money as possible you must work quickly and keep your customers as happy and relaxed as possible.

Each customer’s mood is represented by hearts, and if you take too long the they’ll get angry, and will pay you less when they leave. When left for too long, some customers will do things that put others in a bad mood too. For example, pregnant women start crying if left for too long, old women fall asleep and start snoring, and the hollywood twins talk incessantly and irritate everyone in the spa.

Upgrades

At first the only way to prevent upsetting your customers is to work quickly, but later you will be able to buy items which will let you improve their mood, like a tea or incense set, or a stereo to play music. You can also spend your earnings on upgrades for your equipment. The equipment upgrades can improve the mood of your customers, make them pay more, or let Jade work faster. Another way to increase Jade’s speed is to purchase training for her. As you progress through the game, you can also customize Jade’s clothes with the color and pattern swatches that become available.

Mini-games

To make some of the special treatments, you will need to play the 3 mini-games that will become available as you progress in the game. In the "Mix 'em up!" mini-game you need to mix ingredients to make the right colors, and then put the mixtures in the right spot on the turning wheels. There are only 3 colors to mix at first, but later in the game white will also be available, which will enable you to make lighter shades of the base colors.

To improve your Shiatsu massages you will need to play the meditation mini-game. This game is the easiest, as all you have to do is click on the bad dreams before they destroy the good ones. It was quite easy for me because I use a tablet and so I can move my cursor quickly, but it might be slightly more difficult for mouse users.

The "Combo Catch" mini-game is for making incense, and you will need to catch ingredients in your basket that are falling from trees. Try to only catch the ingredients shown at the bottom of the screen, or you will have to start over.

Conclusion

I would have liked more upgrades in the 2nd half of the game, so that there would have been something to work towards. I was also expecting Jade to get her own Spa in the end, and was a bit disappointed when that didn't happen. That said, Spa Mania is perfect if you don’t have a lot of time to play and are looking for a game that you don’t need in-depth instruction for. Each level can be finished in a few minutes, and if you have to suddenly stop playing, you can easily pick up where you left off later. The gameplay is the same throughout the game - as you progress to the higher levels, all you have to do is work faster and find the work method that works best for you, adapting to accommodate the more difficult customers.