Price the cuts
Value fills chairs and thins the margin. Premium pays in Westlake and empties Pflugerville.
GAME DOSSIER · BUSINESS SIM · AUSTIN METRO
You run a salon. Now grow a chain.
Start with one shop and $24,000. Every weekly choice pushes toward the question that matters: can this location pay for the next one?
ONE LINK◆NO ACCOUNT◆NO INSTALL◆BUILT FOR A SPECIFIC WORLD
Every strip-mall haircut has a business model.
You sign a lease somewhere in the Austin metro. Each week you price cuts, staff chairs, and pay rent, wages, and a six-percent franchise royalty.
An empty chair has an immediate cost, while a price that works in Westlake can fail six miles away. Staff morale changes how much capacity a shop can actually sell.
Twelve neighborhoods sit within driving distance, from San Marcos to Georgetown. You get as many as the first shop can afford.
The world supplies the mechanics.
The specificity is structural: it changes what the player can do, what each choice costs, and what the ending remembers.
Staff the chairs
Hire from three candidates, train them, or match an outside offer when a competitor calls.
Buy the next buildout
Twelve thousand adds chairs. Twenty opens a second address. Cash must become capacity.
The week ends with a receipt.
Each location carries its own rent, foot traffic, average ticket, and buildout. Stylists bring skill, speed, wage expectations, morale, and sometimes a specialty.
The franchise wants five shops, more than $200,000 in cash, and a four-star reputation. Getting there takes good weeks stacked end to end.
BEFORE YOU PLAY
Useful answers, no mystique.
Do I need to know salon operations?
No. If you can read a rent bill, you can play. The first decision arrives in the first minute.
Can I lose?
Yes. Run fifteen thousand dollars past the bottom and the lender stops taking your calls.
Is it comfortable to play?
There is no sound, no timer, and nothing flashes. It honors reduced-motion settings and asks for no permissions.
What does it cost?
Nothing. No account, download, or install.
Why it belongs here.
This game demonstrates the studio’s central claim: a real place, practice, community, or text contains better game mechanics than a broad theme pasted on later.
For commissioned work, the game goes with the client.Studio originals remain ours. A commissioned client receives the whole commissioned game and a practical source handoff under the agreement. We keep pre-existing tools and generalized craft; confidential material and distinct client expression stay with the client. READ THE OWNERSHIP FAQ ↗
Other worlds on the shelf.
Follow the mechanics into another place, practice, memory, or shared text.
PLAY OR BUILD
The 9:40 walk-in is already in the parking lot.
The playable build is free. If this makes you think of a world only your people would recognize, that may be the next game.