Gaming Blog – The Shockwave Spark

What if you could play with beauty and indulgence in Las Vegas? Well… on July 28th you actually can, because Sara’s Super Spa – Vegas Style is coming to Shockwave! Yes, it is true, Sara is moving to Vegas and she’ll need help making her spa a super success. I tore Sara’s creator and game producer, Michael Ruppert, away from the Spa to get some inside info for us about the best online beauty retreat in Vegas.

The Spark: Everyone is really excited about the new Sara’s Super Spa – Vegas Style, but we NEED more info to fuel our spa dreams! Could you please share with us your favorite feature of the new game?

Michael Ruppert: My favorite new feature of the game is the Product Creation Station. Once you unlock this station and place it in the spa, you can click on it at any time during a level and play mini-games that allow you to create new shampoo, nail polish, and facial creams. You even get to select the ingredients for each! Once you’ve finished a product, some clients will either ask for it when at a station or may purchase one of your new products before leaving the spa. And depending upon what ingredients you put in the product, the client’s behavior will change as well (they may even give you higher tips!).

The Spark: Wow, we get to create our own spa products? Now I really can’t wait! How did you get the idea to make Sara’s Super Spa?

Michael Ruppert: I’m a big fan of the Nintendo DS. I love using the stylus and performing different kinds of actions. One day, I was playing Nintendogs and was washing my dog and it dawned on me that using the stylus was really just like using the mouse. Then I started thinking about time management games. I always felt that something was missing in most time management games. I noticed that you never got to do any of the tasks and I thought that it would be fun to manage people in a game while dragging them around to various stations AND be able to perform the actions at those stations. Why should some character have all the fun? So I coupled the idea of mouse based gestural movements with a time management game and decided to place it in a spa where all sorts of fun mouse movements could be used to simulate real world activities.

The Spark: Great idea! We’re really excited to see what happens next at the Super Spa! You must be going through all sorts of last minute fixes right now, could you please share with us the most challenging aspect of developing this game?

Michael Ruppert: The most challenging part of developing this game has been the testing and the bug fixing. This game is extremely robust for an online Flash game and there are many moving parts that can cause a lot of problems. The biggest issue has been the Customize Spa portion of the game. Due to the fact that players can customize their spa in so many different ways, it has been difficult to find and fix all of the little problems that can arise from such a flexible customization engine. This game has been undergoing testing for a little over 1 month.

The Spark: Wow, that sounds pretty intense! You’ll definitely need some R&R after July 28th when Sara’s Super Spa: Vegas Style comes out. One final question before you get back into the spa world: what kind of field research was done for the game? Were you pampered at a spa (for research purposes only, of course) and how was that experience?

Michael Ruppert: Well, I didn’t actually go get a spa treatment (that would have been really nice, thought), I was too busy thinking about the game. I did go out to different spas to find out what treatments are out there and what we didn’t put in the original. Maybe once this game is out, I can go get a massage!
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Hmmm, a massage does sound nice. So does a beauty treatment, and on July 28th you’ll be able to do much more at the spa! How about acupuncture reflexology, and a massaging facial? Oh, a girl can dream! Until then, this girl will be at Sara’s Super Spa on Shockwave.