Beauty Center

When it comes to keeping the customer satisfied, there are plenty of casual games to take your pick from. Variations on the theme include the likes of Diner Dash and Cake Mania, both of which have come from web to mobile (and DS).

Beauty Center (which we elitist English notice is spelt wrong) offers an expansion for the service industry simulator fan, though it's not without a few bumps along the way.

Taking control of a brand new beauty salon, it's your happy task to wash, prune and pamper the clientele who amble through the doors wanting their hair to be transformed with an archetypal Gisele or Kate cut.

A detailed tutorial eases you into the barber's chair and shows you around the brand new crop shop; acclimating newcomers simply and efficiently, although sadly there isn't a Britney Spears bonus level.

The first task you have to carry out is something of a mystery (mentioned nowhere in the tutorial). A random character sidles on screen and tells you she wants to look like the full screen picture of the model behind her, whereupon a short timer gives you the opportunity to memorise the model's hairstyle before you have to select the same cut from a line up of different dos.

It's not that this is a difficult system to fathom, but the sudden divergence immediately after the tutorial feels a little jarring, and can rob you of a few bucks that would otherwise be easy money. Thereafter it's into the action as the salon opens for business.

Customers wander in with a list of indulgences they want you to sate in a certain order. Select the waiting customer, cycle around the icons in the salon and select the next one on the list – washing, cutting, colouring etc.

As the customer moves into the various parts of the shop, a timer gradually decreases to keep your finger on the move, and it's on to the next task. The points are won by keeping the punters happy – which essentially means you don't keep them waiting. The happier they are when they leave, the bigger the tip you get.

As with Diner Dash, this high speed customer management is remarkably simple in concept, yet incredibly demanding when put into practice. A busy shop soon means flustered staff and disgruntled clients, and trying to cycle around a circular array of icons with directional control buttons (or even the keypad) can become quite frustrating.

In that respect, a real problem with the game are the incredibly small graphics. For such manic finger-bashing title, it's difficult to pick out the details of the isometric pseudo-3D salon on a mobile screen. A new customer, who enters the shop just as another is paying (which takes a moment or two), is almost completely camouflaged, while tracking down a seated customer is no easy matter either.

Some form of audible indication that a new punter has entered the shop would have gone a long way toward helping, but other than a bit of menu music and a chime of jingle bells when someone pays up, Beauty Center is practically mute.

At least the inclusion of an Endless Shift, whereby it's simply a case of not losing too many customers, is a useful addition that provides quicker gameplay than the Story mode, though there are no new salons to expand the impatient customer base.

So while it's good to see the continued growth of the service industry sim on mobile, and despite offering a solid experience, Beauty Center is hampered by a lack of clarity which undermines the control system to the point of irritation. Frankly, this could do with a bit of makeover itself.