Knugg Rally

In Belle's Beauty Boutique you must help run a beauty parlor single-handedly. The owner, Belle, needs your help to give all of her customers the treatments they want. Your job is to help her wash, cut, shampoo and color a crazy cast of characters as they gossip, flirt, and help Belle realize her dream of creating the ultimate beauty salon!

Belle is aided in her quest for beauty by two helpers who appear at different times during the game. Bette is a bookworm paying her way through college as a beautician, while Angel is more of a social butterfly who just loves cutting hair. Both need frequent attention or they will end up reading a book or talking on their cell phone and not helping customers!

The basic game mechanic consists of dragging patrons into the beauty stations that correspond to the treatments they have requested. For the nail color and hair color stations the player must additionally pick the right color.

Of course, as anyone who has spent any time in a beauty parlor can tell you, hair and nail treatments are really secondary to the main activity: gossip! Players wrack up huge bonusses for sitting people next to each other in such a way that they gossip with each other. Since guys as well as ladies frequent Belle's, you can also get flirt bonusses for putting the two together....

One of the interesting features of Belle's Beauty Boutique is the use of the scrapbook as a metaphor for displaying the user's accomplishments. Through the scrapbook the player watches the story unfold, learns about new patrons and pieces of equipment for the shop, and even redecorates from time to time!

Here is the original production sketch for Belle's Beauty Boutique. In the original design I had a tip jar on the desk, which patrons would deposit money into after they were done with their treatments. Bette was originally conceived of as the Tip Thief (who would later be revealed as a rival beauty shop owner) occasionally wandering in and trying to make off with Belle's hard-earned money. During the prototype phase, however, we realized this wasn't much fun so we cut it out of the game.

Belle's Beauty Boutique has proven to be one of the top selling games in its genre, and has even been translated into French for distribution overseas. Ooh la la!

Belle's Beauty Boutique Credits

Executive Producers : Tom Jacobson, Malcolm Michaels
Lead Programmer: Phillip Reagan
Lead Artist: Wil Teran
Additional Art: Present Creative
Music & Sound Effects: Eric Salazar, Mike Peaslee
Voice Actors: Mike Peaslee, Cory Ringdahl, Amber Jones, Tina Bettencourt, Moe Muhtashimi