PC Game Review: Spa Mania
Protesters stand outside of Dubois Cosmetic Labs protesting product testing with animals. Jade leads the charge and has an eventful meeting with snooty Madame DuBois. There, Jade meets the owner of a five-star spa and asks if she could work there. Jade begins her spiritual journey in learning therapy and treatment secrets from faraway places in hopes of opening an Earth-friendly spa.
I don’t get off to a good start with Spa Mania. The game feels like torture because it runs slowly and sometimes froze on a computer that more than meets the minimum requirements. The first few levels dragged, but I couldn’t do a review without giving it a chance. As upgrades came in and mini-games appeared, the game turned around. I contacted tech support and made changes to my video settings, which improved the performance but not 100%.
Players start with a couple of stations and a valet. The valet cleans up the dressing room and fills the hot tub. We do the rest of the work — mostly. That includes increasing customers’ happiness while lowering their stress levels, guiding them from one station to the next, making and serving green tea, and checking them out. The green tea adds another heart to a customer’s happiness meter.
Spa Mania looks like an ordinary time management game with no new formulas. Then I complete five levels of play in the first locale and met the first mini-game there. Jade learns spa treatment secrets during these mini-games and they tie in with the action. In the first one, she mixes formulas using her (yours) knowledge of color theory. The number of formulas players complete will provide her with special treatment to use on customers in the game.
The next time you play this color mini-game, it changes slightly adding another color to the mix to create a new treatment. But first, you need to play two other mini-games before playing one a second time. In the dream mini-game, players do a “Whac-a-mole” on red and mean-looking faces while leaving the sunny happy faces alone. Jade, sitting in a Zen pose, floats higher as players smash nightmares and let the happy dreams fly around. This mini-game assigns a dollar value to massages.
In the third game, you create incense to use for boosting the customers’ happy meters. Here, Jade runs left and right with a bowl in hand catching incense ingredients. The mix uses flowers, leaves, and fruits. That’s right! No find a pair mini-game or any of those common ones you see in every other time management game. After finishing a mini-game, you travel to a new country and enter a new spa with design reflecting the country.
Spa Mania lets players change Jade’s outfit and unlock new colors and designs. Her outfits don’t change drastically — mostly in color and with a pattern. You can skip this part of the game. Players can also replay mini-games between levels to produce more incense and treatments as needed.
The customers don’t have much personality and their main difference is their happiness level upon their arrival. You’ll help emos, business people, hippies, pregnant women, and seniors. Two employees become available as upgrades — when you have enough cash to afford them.
Spa Mania takes place in 10 locations with 50 levels of game play. The last level takes much patience and experimenting to beat. The intriguing story complete with a spy comes together nicely and with the right amount of dialogue between locales.
The great graphics, bright scenes, and creative and integrated mini-games should attract some fans. The patrons don’t annoy as much as they do in other time management games. They’re just there, but you have enough to do without worrying about their attitudes. While the places Jade manages are five-star spas, Spa Mania falls right in the middle of its genre.
