Features

Don’t expect Paradise Pet Salon [download] to feel like a day at the spa as you’re doing all the work while Whiskers and Spot relax and enjoy the ride. The greedy Pet Corp. fires you for making the animals healthy, which is bad for business. You find a little rundown place and set up your own salon with opportunities to add more salons in this dog eat dog world. However, after adding a store or two, you may not want to continue to build your little “good guy” empire.

Things don’t go well when I first play the game because I run into an error message that pops up every time I do something. I research the issue finding no answers and the Windows Vista computer more than meets the minimum requirements. The good news is that if you encounter a problem, it’ll happen before the trial hour runs out. I try one more time installing it on Windows XP computer and the game cooperates.

Two things that make Paradise Pet Salon [download] different are its 3D graphics and not having a minimum monetary goal to move to the next level. This isn’t the 3D style you see in virtual reality games where a person (ME!) can get dizzy. Unlike most business management games, this one lets you design your salon however you want. Designing a store includes flooring, walls, furniture, equipment, placement of equipment and so on. It would be nice if we could preview what the flooring or paint will look like before buying.

You can upgrade everything, but some upgrades require waiting until you open a specific store (store #3, store #6, etc.). It takes time to make enough money to buy a new store — after all, you need to use the money to make your current store better and faster. Thus, the challenge of the game comes in deciding how much to spend and how much to save for the next store.

When a dog or cat comes in, icons appear on top of the animal indicating what services they need. These include bathing, hair cutting, styling, doctoring, and hot tubbing. If a pet still has more treatments left, you usually don’t know until the treatment ends because the smoke cloud from the service doing its job hides the icons. Is this for encouraging players to memorize orders or is it an annoying oversight?

Sometimes you can’t see the icons as you walk the pets from station to station and have to move somewhere out in the open to see what the pet needs. Other than keeping things flowing, pets moving and money managed, the game isn’t challenging. It’s more entertainment than a game. But if that’s true, why don’t the pets look different after receiving treatment? In the other salon-related games, we see a customer’s new look. Also, owners and animals are the same in terms of not having personality.

The treatments take a little too long and test a person’s patience. This gets better later. When a machine receives two upgrades, the pace improves a lot. Unfortunately, other than more pets, there is not much change or variety in each level. Actually, a note appears in between levels with a news report such as ticks are a problem or a celebrity endorses a treatment so expect more requests for related services. While the ultimate goal is to take over Pet Corp., not much happens along the way except for an occasional comment from the dark side when buying a new store.

My favorite part is the assistant. I love that you can hire an assistant to return the animals back to the owners. Occasionally, I return the animals to the owner and sometimes struggle to click the right owner with others in the way. Hearts appear over the owners and their pets to indicate their happiness level. If they start blinking, take the pet to the water or food station to make them feel better.

The neat features of 3D graphics, the ability to design your own store, and buying stores aren’t enough for Paradise Pet Salon [download] to call it the cat’s meow. With some tweaking, Paradise Pet Salon [download] could become a top dog or the casual gamer’s paradise.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/98/2000/XP
• 600 MHz or faster processor
• 128 MB RAM
• DirectX 7.0 or later

System Requirements: Mac

• Mac OSX
• 128 MB RAM
• G3 400 MHz