screenshots of the game
screenshots of the game

💅 Pixel Polish: Tiny Nail Salon

🎮 A cozy pixel-art salon where every tap becomes part of the manicure.

✨ Inspiration

I wanted to turn the tiny, satisfying act of painting nails into a complete game loop. My visual direction came from the supplied cozy 8-bit salon references: chunky handheld-style lettering, soft pink and mint panels, expressive client portraits, illustrated polish bottles, and a salon that visibly becomes warmer as it grows.

The central idea is simple: the player should feel the brush, read the request, and see the studio improve. Every client brings a small creative problem, and every good manicure gives the player more room to decorate and expand.

💗 What it does

Pixel Polish: Tiny Nail Salon is a single-player, portrait Simulation & Management game.

The player runs a tiny nail studio through a five-day campaign:

🖌️ Choose a shape and polish, then tap each nail by hand across both hands.
🎨 For pattern requests, copy one design on a large pixel grid and apply it to all ten nails.
💖 Match each client's requested style: Solid, French Tip, Two Tone, or Accent.
💰 Earn service pay and tips based on accuracy, patience, and care.
🛍️ Spend the money on polish packs, tools, staff, and two levels of visible salon upgrades.
📈 Build reputation and salon rank while client requests, colors, shapes, and patterns change from run to run.
🌟 After a successful opening, keep playing in Free Play with randomized regular and creative clients.

The prototype contains 19 campaign clients, 21 polish colors, six nail shapes, 14 manual patterns, seven upgrade categories, nine shop purchases, and three staff roles. Creative requests let the player choose the palette and draw an original design without a timer.

Progress is saved locally. The game can be opened directly from index.html in the submitted ZIP, with no server or internet connection required.

🧰 How I built it

I built the prototype as a readable HTML5 game through an AI-assisted prompt, iteration, and playtest workflow.

The art is procedural pixel art: a custom bitmap alphabet, stepped panels, salon furniture, clients, hands, polish bottles, nail masks, and pattern generators. A 360×720 logical canvas keeps the experience portrait and touch-friendly while nearest-neighbor rendering keeps the pixels crisp.

The game uses the same semantic controls for mouse and touch. Checkpoints store the current day, cash, purchases, staff, client request, hand, coat progress, drawing grid, undo history, and remaining time.

🧩 Challenges we ran into

Making a manual manicure feel clear on a small portrait screen without turning it into a menu of automatic actions.
Supporting two hands, two-color passes, reserved accent nails, and a one-time pattern transfer while keeping the next action obvious.
Balancing service income against meaningful upgrade choices across only five days.
Keeping pixel edges clean while scaling characters, hands, buttons, and icons.
Catching visual problems that logic tests could not see: tiny labels, duplicated instructions, unclear locked states, and crowded button art.

🏆 Accomplishments

✋ Every nail is painted manually, one at a time, with visible brush color and tap feedback.
🧠 One pattern drawing becomes a complete ten-nail design, turning a small pixel puzzle into a salon result.
🏠 Upgrades visibly transform the room from a worn studio into a brighter salon.
🎲 Each new run creates different client requests while saving the chosen order consistently on reload.
💾 A player can close the HTML game mid-service and resume the same hand, colors, drawing, purchases, and cash.
🌈 Free Play turns the finished campaign into an open creative salon instead of a one-screen ending.
✅ The packaged build has been played through the full 19-client route, failure routes, replay, save recovery, touch input, and offline browser checks.

🚀 What's next for Pixel Polish (Tiny Nail Salon)

With more time, Pixel Polish would grow into a longer salon story with:

🪴 configurable room layouts and more furniture that changes the client experience;
💌 client personalities, recurring customers, and story-driven requests;
🧵 a larger pattern library plus more expressive free-draw tools;
🎀 seasonal polish collections, events, and salon themes;
📖 a richer studio progression that carries the player's favorite designs forward.