Not all games shoot out at once, so it’s interesting to see how this or that hit climbed to the top. In the blog, Azur Games tells how he took the haircut project  Hair Tattoo: Barbershop Master in the top 3 simulators.

Side note: Azur Games increased instals by changing the icon.

Games of the haircut genre are simulators in which the gamer creates haircuts and acts as a hairdresser. Today the market representatives of the genre a lot, but most with cartoon art aimed more at female audiences.

Azur Games went so differently that 75% of the players were men at launch. Then the audience was expanded but left the main difference from other projects — realistic visuals.

As a result, a simulation about the everyday life of a barbershop passed the 10 million downloads mark in one month.

How it all began

The gameplay idea is simple: the player serves customers according to their wishes: making haircuts, dyeing and styling hair, using different tools, and creating hair tattoos — from geometric shapes to various symbols. The master’s efforts are rewarded with positive feedback, and satisfied customers pay more money, which the gamer uses to develop the salon.

Today the gameplay looks like this:

The idea came up in December 2021. I saw a YouTube video with 60 million views, where the artist was showing a haircut with tattoos on the hair. It dawned on me — that’s the niche; you must make a simulator.

Vyacheslav Galygin, the founder of Next2Play studio, the developer of Hair Tattoo: Barbershop Master

The first build with a couple of mechanics showed the project’s viability. But no one wanted to make yet another specific product. I wanted a «main feature» that would change everything.

The guys brought the haircut simulator project along with several others. But it was hard to imagine the result since even the kor-mechanics were missing. The words «barbershop», «haircuts», and «salon» were associated with a pack of competitors. Azur Games invited the studio to assemble a prototype to get the idea.

Alexander Prokopovich, producer at Azur Games

The importance of visuals

Spring 2022 found an approach: bet on realistic settings and characters.

The team also moved away from the exaggeratedly cartoonish, overly flamboyant mainstream into realism. For the players to associate themselves with the salon’s master and customers. And this choice paid off.

Alexander Prokopovich, producer of Azur Games

We began to build a simulator without acid colours, sequins and cute characters but with a recognizable interior and a calm colour scheme. Before coming to GC, Next2Play was a midcore project, hence the focus on the visuals, which are closer to the casual genre.

I’m a fan of visuals. I think that its influence on the perception of the game is excellent. I want a pretty picture. It may be too much by GC standards, but I am close to that hybrid aesthetic; I like doing it that way.

Vyacheslav Galygin, the founder of Next2Play studio, the developer of Hair Tattoo: Barbershop Master

When we found a solution with visuals, we connected marketing tools: user attraction, advertising, and metrics analysis.

I am glad that the project’s marketing is on the publisher’s side. Today I do not have a headache about UA, scaling, or ASO, which makes life easier. I follow metrics and trends but spend most of my time on game design and art.

Vyacheslav Galygin, the founder of Next2Play studio, the developer of Hair Tattoo: Barbershop Master

During the promotional campaigns, Azur Games found some exciting features. The game improved in regions where barbershops are integral to the historical tradition.

TikTok ads gave an unexpected increase in organics. Most likely, the game went viral. And while that’s just a guess, for now, the influx of organics is still going on, and TikTok’s CPI is lower than Facebook’s — $0.16 vs $0.31.

Advertising campaign on Facebook
TikTok advertising campaign

Expanding the audience

The game was developed about a barbershop, a salon for men. Men accounted for 75% of players at launch, which is not typical for haircut simulators.

Azur Games faced a choice: to continue to focus on the male audience and remain a highly specialized project or to scale the game at the expense of the female audience without losing male gamers. The second option looked more promising.

Male characters were still leading in popularity, but a growing number of players liked the variety.

The tilt towards male gamers is gradually flattening out, and the audience is becoming mixed.

Freedom of action

When testing hypotheses, the idea was to give the player specific templates to shear clients and choose drawings. That is to take away the right to make a mistake. This seemed to appeal to hyper-casual gamers, as the default work would be flawless.

But suddenly, such a «backstory» didn’t catch on. People began to be annoyed by this imaginary perfection. And instead of growth, there was a mass exodus of users.

In conclusion, gamers do not strive for perfection but the freedom of creativity.

Project development

According to a report by App2Top and AppMagic, at the end of July 2022, the game ranked 9th in total downloads — 14 million. And 8th in downloads on Android, with over 13 million installations.

Today the project is in the top 3 simulators in many countries and is actively developing.

We plan to diversify the characters and haircuts, refine the setting, open a tool store, and add a voiceover and the ability to take photos of finished hairstyles.

While the game is monetized only through no ads and interstitials, the audience already wants to spend in-game currency and get rewards. That is, the players entered the taste and demanded a variety of challenges.

The keys to success

Taking off the project is a bit of magic that adds up to quite specific things:

  • The choice of theme is based on market analysis and openness to the lives potential users live;
  • A unique visual;
  • The pursuit of hybridity through meta, inapps and other midcore chips is increasingly being used in GC.

There are seven people on the Next2Play team today, with their full attention focused on Hair Tattoo: Barbershop Master. But there are new joint projects in the plans, so the studio will expand and modify the workflow. There are many more exciting things to come.

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