Hairdresser Simulator – Review

I might have been playing video games my whole life and I’ve definitely covered more simulation games than I can remember, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never played a Hairdressing game before. Hairdresser Simulator follows the popular trend of merging job simulation with business management, so it’s time to grab your scissors and take a cut of those profits to expand your business.

Starting off from humble beginnings, you’ll take a quick crash course in how to handle your customers with a simple tutorial on how to wash, straighten and then curl hair, after picking up your first premises in the basement of another building, you’ll get a guide on how to grab the essentials required before you can welcome your first customer.

Initially it’s a pretty straight forward job of sending the customer to the wash chair where you’ll encounter mini-game style challenges to wash and shampoo the hair, before directing them to the salon chair where you’ll then be able use various tools via a wheel, such as the hand tool for manoeuvring the hair to access different areas as well as those curling tongues, the straighteners and after a few customers, clippers and scissors for trimming their mullet. with progression you’ll keep unlocking new tasks such as hair dye and thinning scissors thanks to easy to follow tutorials.

As well as trimming the hair of men and women, you’ll start to expand your business, my own “Cut and Dye” business was starting to bring in excess funds, so I was able to pick up a few extra chairs and employ two members of staff who would automatically handle any customers.
then at the start of each day, I’d fill my own diary with customers, ranging from someone who simply wanted their hair curling, to more complex and time consuming tasks such as wash, shampoo, dye, cut and straighten.

You’ll also star to pick up special customers, shown by a small star next to their name, these customers will give a great multiplier to your earnings and they’ll come with their own voiced dialouge to give a little backstory about them and their goings on.

Progressing further through the game and you’ll start to unlock new locations, there’s 9 in total, but it’s as early as the second building where you start to feel like a proper little business, it’s more spacious, and with a few adjustments will soon be looking more like a professional hair salon than it’s meat market roots.

In each location, you can have a different business name, layout, colour scheme and up to three members of staff (as long as there’s an extra chair to use when you’re around), there are plenty of customisation options from the metal and leather of chairs to lamps, plants and rugs to make each salon your own.
Each day, you can work at whichever location you choose, but you’ll get a notification if there’s a special customer booked in elsewhere.

I personally started off with 3 chairs and 2 more colleagues in each location, but with every employeee you bring on board, there’ll also be a “pro and con” perk, some might earn more or work longer, but on the flip side, they might be less likely to clean up their mess, or to leave before they’ve seen all clients.
None of these perks are too complicated, and every few days you’ll get a new list of CV’s to choose from prospective staff. I stuck with those less likely to clean up, so I could maximise earnings, and I soon picked up “Hairry” the little robot that wonders around and cleans up for your half-hearted staff.

After about half a dozen hours, you’ll be in full swing, and happily managing multiple businesses, there is a degree of repetition to the actual hairdressing tasks, but with being able to select which customers you see at the start of each day, it helps to avoid doing the exact same thing time and time again. You’ll also start to get customers who aren’t as picky and give you the freedom of sandbox mode to mould their mullet however you please.

With Sandbox mode, you can spawn a random man or woman (or use the limited character creator to build your own mop of uncontrolable hair to tame) and then set to work doing whatever you want. If you feel like giving that long-haird guy a shaved undercut, with layers and then a man bun on top go ahead, or if like me, you fancy repaying a grumpy customer who looked disgusted when I sprayed her in the face with water, you’re free to shave a cross on top of her head and then send her on her way.

Sandbox mode soon grows a little tiresome, but it’s fun to explore and especially great if you’ve got a youngster watching who wants to have a go, but you dont fancy starting a whole new game or letting them loose on your established clientelle.

Graphically, there’s the usual feel to characters and that limited creation system means you’ll see plenty who have been shopping at the same place wearing that same dress, but overall especially the hair mechanics how it fals over the shoulders and trims away with ease regardless of whether you stick to the default system of 8 areas across the head (top and bottom of the front and back of each side) or separate the head into a few dozen areas for even more precise control for highlighting maybe just a small section or carefully giving layers.

Audio is never going to set any records for the sound of a shower and the snip of scissors, but everything sounds as you’d expect, with enough ambiance to make it feel like you’re working away in a small town/city, those special customers are also fully voice-acted, so while there’s not the general chatter of “Hows the weather” there’s still enough conversaiton with a few, to make it sound as you might expect.

After investing well over a full day into my haird-dressing career, It’s fair to say I’ve enjoyed Hairdressing Simulator far more than I’d antipcated, it definitely starts to wear thin after a dozen hours or so, but equally it’s the sort of game you can pick up and do an in-game day (generally takes about 10-15 minutes) as often as you like, all while slowly expanding your businesses.
There’s also a Moustache’s and Beards DLC coming post-launch (which was a free addition on PC), and if the PC release back in March is anything to go by, we can expect a very reasonable price of around £20, which makes Hairdressing Simulator fantastic value too.

It’s hard to place Hairdressing Simulator as it sits besides many titles like Lawnmowing Simulator, Bus Simulator, Construction Simulator and Taxi Life as more than adequate business management titles, with a great baseline of job simulation. Even if Hairdressing isn’t necessarily your chosen degree, you might still be in for a surprise.

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