Trouble on the set! Flo’s friend Gilda needs help feeding the cast and crew of her TV show. You prepare, cook, assemble and serve the delicious menu items from each TV-themed restaurant. Watch for celebrities, but beware of the short-tempered director who will make sure everyone gets back to work quickly! Can you successfully feed the egos and stomachs of the cast and crew before they walk off the set?

Sounds like Food Network’s “Who will be the next Food Network Star” Diner Dash style. I look forward to trying this out as I’ve been on a Food Network and Travel Network kick lately. Plus, I loved the original Cooking Dash.

Download Cooking Dash – DinerTown Studios to give it a try.

Bernie the Bookworm loves to solve a mystery, but he thinks there’s nothing to detect in DinerTown. Flo comes along and proves him wrong. They may not have serious crimes like murder and high-priced robberies, but they have plenty of quirky things happening in this hidden object game (HOG) with a dash of puzzles. Bernie starts DinerTown Detective Agency and Diner Dash‘s Flo tags along to get out of the kitchen for a bit.

While the hidden object piece doesn’t introduce anything new, the game takes a different approach by treating each level as a single case. Bernie investigates a couple of scenes, collects clues and puts together puzzles. Upon completing a review of the scenes, Bernie completes several puzzles to eliminate suspects and then determine the culprit.

Bernie has 25 cases to solve spread throughout 20 DinerTown locations from the gym to the — where else? — diner. Fans of other PlayFirst games will recognize many of the characters, which adds to the charm. Not knowing the characters won’t affect the experience.

A new DinerTown Detective Agency case begins at the scene of the crime and nearby locations. For example, if the crime takes place in an office, Bernie looks around the break room and in an employee’s cubicle. Bernie looks around the store and its storeroom when the crime occurs in a store for items that appear on the list of things to find or a picture of an object where you must find all of its parts to to put together. Some items enter your inventory for use in the scene.

Every case also has an interactive feature such as dusting for fingerprints, using a magnifying glass to find tiny objects or squeezing an eyedropper to find evidence. There is no rhyme or reason for where you need to click — it’s purely a guessing game. It’s fun at first, but quickly turns old.

After completing the scene investigation, Bernie eliminates suspects in mini-games such as matching fingerprints or putting cards onto a grid where the columns and rows have a common theme. When down to three suspects, Bernie uses logic to identify the culprit. Each suspect has a Yes / No column and you check them off based on interviewing witnesses. Whichever suspect meets all three criteria identified earlier is the culprit. Case solved! Celebrate. Next case.

The familiar graphics live up to what you’ve come to expect from PlayFirst games like Wedding Dash, Diner Dash, Fitness Dash and many more. While a fun and cute game, it soon feels repetitive. The humor, funny cases and overall production will rein in Flo fans who like a good HOG or willing to try it with DinerTown Detective Agency.

Download of DinerTown Detective Agency free.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Love. Quirky family members. Wedding crashers. Beautiful brides. Bridezillas. Groom kongs. Who doesn’t love a wedding even with all of its craziness? Quinn returns in Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! for a third helping as a wedding planner who happily serves her clients in this blissful (most of the time) time management series.

She is planning the biggest wedding of her life — her own to Joe, the photographer. One hitch: he doesn’t know about it! An opening came up in a hot spot and it was either grab it in six weeks or wait years. She asks cupid for help, but he has a backlog of his own. If she helps him through his backlog, he’ll help her with her situation.

Like the previous games, your job is to seat guests and keep them happy or else face Bridezilla and Groom Kong. Of course, Quinn has a few tricks for managing manage guests when the food doesn’t get to them fast enough. She has cocktail tables and bells that bring out the cherubs.

She holds weddings in interesting locales beginning with an aquarium followed by a barn and two others. The game receives a few new features to make it the best one in the series. The cherubs can add one or two hands in helping Flo carry food and gifts, but they’re upgrades.

Before you start the reception, you have to figure out what the couple wants. In the past, you picked the three things that best meets their requests. in Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!, you also have to watch the budget and it’s possible to have several right answers. This is more enjoyable although it turns challenging in the later levels.

Guests may request champagne, the microphone to share a special message to the new couple, a song request or seating change. These give you bonus opportunities as well as chaining (doing the same actions in a row). Of course, Quinn has to deal with disasters ranging from over-celebrating bridesmaids and birds at the table to falling gifts and a missing dog.

The guests have personality traits to vary the pace. Some eat fast, others eat slow, one eats two of every course and one forgets to eat. While all of this sounds overwhelming, the game introduces new guests and features over time rather than all at once. The challenge level also slowly works from easy to tough.

Every venue comes with one cupid mini-game. Cute, but kind of pointless except to earn more coin. Cupid needs to shoot one man and one woman to match the given couple. Not only do you control the location of the arrow, but the strength of the shot.

As expected of Dash games, the game tells a great and fun story without overloading or confusing you. Two modes come in this one: adventure and endless. Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! has the honor of being my favorite of the Dash series. Diner Dash is simply too hard and the customers are bland compared to Wedding Dash’s.

PlayFirst knows how to put on a great wedding and succeeds again with Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!

Download Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Before digging in Fitness Dash, beware that playing the game does not substitute for exercise! Maybe it’ll motivate you to exercise when you take a break as you’re Jo, who is friends with Flo of Diner Dash and Quinn of Wedding Dash. So Dash fans will recognize a few characters including Uncle Ernie, brides and Aunt Ethel.

Fitness Dash is exactly what you expect if you’ve played any Dash game. Except replace the theme with the gym. Jo frantically runs around passing out towels, handing out water bottles, putting the lazy folks on machines instead of them walking over themselves and dragging them into the shower (I suppose they’re too pooped to do it alone).

The machines change up from treadmills and bench presses to rowing machines and ellipticals. Machines provide cardio (treadmill), strength training (ab cruncher) or both (skiing machine). Clients let you know what kind of exercise they want and how much. For instance, the body builder wants three rounds of strength training and the career woman usually wants both types.

Jo works with her clients for 10 rounds to help them prepare for a game of tug-o-war, the only original part of the game and a creative one at that. It’s a match three-style game except you must match at least FOUR connecting tiles and you can click the tiles to change the color. The bigger the match, the more your team pulls the rope. Too slow and your opponents will have the stronger pull. The whole war takes place below the matching grid, but who has time to watch it when you’re working to get those matches made?

Story and endless modes are available — no surprise. However, endless mode provides two options: gym and tug-o-war. In gym mode, you simply just keep the customers happy for as long as you can without losing five of them. Tug-o-war is one endless stream of matching where you level up every time you clear the screen. Endless mode comes with easy, medium and hard levels.

Disasters also appear in Fitness Dash where Jo needs to fix the TV, shoo away the ice cream truck guy or fix broken machines. Healthy muffins and water bottles earn you happiness points — these are the kind of things you give to customers without them asking for it. It’s possible to play a few different locations without using the water machine and still reach expert status. But the game does get harder and frantic by the fourth locale.

Shopping for upgrades is still there even for endless mode. You can stop to shop whenever you want (and have enough cash) in endless. The game doesn’t stop for you.

The game went a little berserk when things were happening fast. Picking up a client to carry to the shower didn’t go as smoothly. Selecting water and towels on their machines didn’t always take.

Though the Fitness Dash sticks to the reliable Dash formula, it has enough going on with its theme that it can addict fans (me, included — even my surgery-healed thumb hurt from playing the fast levels). Playfirst has an unbeatable formula in its Dash games and produces a decent spin-off. Playing the free trial will give you an idea of the game play to see if you like the theme enough to make the buy.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.

Check out other Dashes

• Diaper Dash
• Cooking Dash
• Wedding Dash 2
• Dairy Dash
• SpongeBob Diner Dash 2

Adding “Tycoon” to the Dinertown Tycoon name is a smart move. This way people don’t confuse this game with Diner Dash even though Flo appears in it. Plus, many gamers know what it means to be a tycoon game. A tycoon game involves running a business, making decisions and running the day to see how your decisions make out.

I loved Fairy Godmother Tycoon (FGT). If you don’t like FGT or tycoon games, this isn’t for you. Dash fans will recognize many of the 25 customers from the various Diner Dash and Wedding Dash games. This one doesn’t quiet measure up to FGT, but provides enough entertainment for a rainy day afternoon, or in my case, fighting a cold.

In this one, Flo goes up against Grub Burger, which has a secret sauce containing the mysterious Ingredient X (I think it’s the same ingredient that makes a lot of us Sonic drink fans keep coming back. Except Sonic is a good company. Grub ain’t.). Flo manages the menu with 90 dishes available for the buying, stocks up ingredients, set prices and buy new signs to attract the public.

Flo manages various types of restaurants as she makes way through five neighborhoods in an effort to run Grub Burgers out of town. The game leaves room for mistakes as I am guilty of a few. For instance, I accidentally click to buy a new dish, when I meant to close the window. I wish Dinertown Tycoon had an undo feature.

Like most tycoon games, you need to strategize before starting a new day. Where do you spend the money? Ingredients? Advertising? Signs? You also get a newspaper so you can see what’s hot as you prepare for another day. The newspaper has one hot ingredient and a Daily Chef Challenge. Beating the challenge will help you drive down Grub Burger’s takeover. More on that in a moment.

Start the day and watch the people eat at the restaurants. Sometimes you’ll notice a bubble over their heads with their thoughts. They could be unhappy with the prices, a satisfied Grub customer, a happy Flo customer (hearts) or coming to your restaurant because of an ad. You’ll be able to identify what kind of ad influenced them to come so you can figure out if you put it in the best place or not.

Some customers come out of your restaurant with a coin over their heads. Click to receive the tip. It’s a clever idea to encourage interaction with the stimulation, which is usually hands-off. However, clicking the coin products a fountain of coins and blocks your view as others may have coins.

Customers also disappear behind some of the game’s features or the restaurant is near the edge, making it harder to see the customers. On top of it, you’re looking for Flo. If you find and click her, she’ll send people your way. It’s a frenzy trying to watch for coins and Flo especially if you own more than one restaurant.

At the end of the day, you’ll see the totals for each customer. The goal is to sell 50 or 100 dishes (depends on the neighborhood) to each customer to complete the neighborhood and push out Grub Burgers. If Grub sells too much Ingredient X (there’s a test tube with green goo to measure its progress), you’re out of business. If you meet the Daily Chef Challenge, you’ll lower the Ingredient X meter.

You can also conduct market research to get to know a customers’ likes. These consist of three ingredients. When you offer a dish with at least one of those, you’ll improve your chances of meeting your 50 to 100 customer goal for that customer type. Oh, and it costs money to do the research. So Dinertown Tycoon is a balancing act of buying the right amount of ingredients, new menu items, ads and all that.

One thing I don’t realize for more than half the game is the Daily Chef Challenge telling me to sell 12 sale dishes or 12 premium dishes. Whenever I fiddle with the price, nothing happens until one time I decide to go way low and discover the price name changes from “regular” to “sale.” Go high enough and it turns into “premium.”

Also, I wish the game would let me know how close I come to meeting the Daily Chef Challenge. I sold at least 12 premium-priced dishes, but I didn’t win it. Why? It needs to clarify these things.

It only takes an afternoon to get through all five neighborhoods even with my losing one neighborhood. The ending also disappoints. At least, the game lets you replay the neighborhood in hopes of making every dish to earn the associated trophy. Considering there are many routes you can take in your decision-making, it’s a challenge to play the game twice, thrice or many times as you try different approaches.

Although not tops, Dinertown Tycoon is a fine tycoon game.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Some of you might think I’m nuts, but I prefer Wedding Dash to Diner Dash. Oh, I love that Flo, but I find her games too hard to play. Quinn’s world starts easy and builds up the challenge little by little. In Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! Cupid joins Quinn plus Flo has a bigger role as she takes care of serving the wedding guests.

This one introduces a new mini-game for a cute change of pace that integrates nicely with the story. Cupid needs to shoot arrows at a male and female that matches the couple shown. You control where he shoots the arrow and how hard he shoots it. Oh, by the way, Cupid looks nothing like a cherub; more like a kind-looking grandfather. The mini-game occurs about halfway through each level.

Quinn also holds the weddings in unique locales beginning with an aquarium. Really — it’s a calming scene that looks made for a wedding. Then she moves to a barn and to the boardwalk, which has a fab background.

Ready, Aim, Love! adds several twists to enhance the game instead of give us more of the same. In previous versions, players have to select three things that match the couple’s request. You can have different good answers in this one. Instead, Quinn has a budget and she has to pick three things to meet the budget or better yet, have some money leftover. For instance, a couple wants to reflect their trip to India and match its orange, white and green flag. So pick the items that are orange, white and green or perhaps as something related to India like curry.

We also meet new guests. No more weepy Aunt Ethel and Drunk Uncle Ernie. Quinn will take care of all the crises as usual, but we meet new ones. Meet a wedding crasher that you need to lead him to the exit and Rosie with her little puppy. Rosy cries whenever her pup gets away. Quinn needs to cheer her up, find the dog and return it to her. The twins who must do everything together including be served to at the same time return. We meet new handsome and sweet people like Brian, Jason and the three bridesmaid friends. They’re a nice change from Gloria. Then we have the mother of the bride — a very difficult customer to please.

Gone is the confetti machine and champagne bottles. Instead, Quinn has lovely cocktail tables to help the guests remain patient a little longer. Also new is the microphone that lets the guests say something to the happy couple. Quinn earns love tokens to use in shopping for upgrades. While upgrades appear in many time management games, Ready, Aim, Love! offers many upgrades instead of just three to make it more challenging and to change things up enough to add to the replay value.

This looks like it’ll exceed Wedding Dash fan expectations. The game release date is within a couple of months. No official date yet. Hey, even wedding couples don’t always have a date set right away. And it will be available for both Win and Mac computers. In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for Wedding Dash 2 until this one is ready for prime time at Playfirst.

I’ve been wondering what the next Dash series would be as PlayFirst enjoys a hit almost every time it releases a Dash. The good news: We have our answer: Diaper Dash. The bad news: This time management game doesn’t measure up to the other and more successful Dashes.

You’re not a baby sitter, nanny or caretaker. Instead, your Wilson, a scientist and inventor. He lost his job (read: fired) with an evil corporation. Wilson meets with Flo who gives him the idea to invent child-safe machines.

He opens a daycare in his sister’s basement and starts working on inventions to make his job easier beginning with Cleanatron, which cleans baby messes.

Like most Dashes, you’ll move around after spending 10 levels in a location. Every building contains a waiting area in the form of a playpen, high chair for feeding, cribs for sleeping, changing station for well… you know, and play area. Instead of customers of all kinds, you have babies with different needs and temperaments. One baby has a voracious appetite and another needs many diaper changes.

Like Diner Dash, you earn bonus points for matching the baby’s gender with the station. The baby’s current need pops up in a pink or blue colored bubble to indicate gender. If a baby needs to eat, you earn extra points by putting the boys in the blue chair and the girls in the pink chair. You can also earn more for swaps. Swap a girl baby in a crib with another girl baby needing a nap.

Not only do you move to new locations, but also get upgrades and new inventions such as a toy dispenser that spouts teddy bears to cheer up a sad baby and a storybook reader who reads stories to babies in the playpen waiting area. For each level, you want to reach the minimum cash goal and try to go for the expert cash goal. Fail to meet the goal and you replay the level.

As expected, the game has two modes: Career and Endless Day. Career tells the story and takes you from building to building in 50 levels. Endless Day comes with three levels (easy, medium and hard) and you play until five babies become unhappy. As you play Endless, you’ll receive upgrades. It gets crazy and makes a gal panicky — that’s why I don’t like Endless mode.

Diaper Dash starts slow and proceeds at a decent pace, but this one — story and game — doesn’t grip me as much as the other games. It feels repetitive and contains no surprises aside from the inventions. Still, the graphics remain top-notch of Dash games and Wilson is a likable guy.

If you want to take care of virtual babies, Daycare Nightmare is a better option since it adds a twist. If you want to check out a good Dash, go for Diner Dash, Cooking Dash or Wedding Dash.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

While I’ve admired the Diner Dash series, I never could get through them as they’re hard. Plus, I always thought the customers look out of place with Flo’s cool cartoon style. The developers behind Flo take a different approach with Cooking Dash and I enjoy it more than the Diner Dash series.

The customers finally receive an upgrade and match the rest of the game and Flo’s style. The characters also get a face lift with subtle animation. No more taking orders and putting the tickets on the diner order spinner thingy (blanking on name).

Flo helps out at five restaurants while Cookie goes off to be a start in yet another chef slash cooking reality show. Grandma makes two dishes while Flo seats folks, runs around to pick up food, throw food that needs cooking on the grill, serve the food, and pick up the dishes.

Each restaurant has a different theme and food to keep things interesting. The grills, ice cream machines, desserts, and Grandma’s station appear in the same place each time. But it becomes tricky when you have to figure out what the customer wants from the grill as the grilled food doesn’t look the same as the uncooked food.

Grandma makes sandwiches, sushi, salads, and pizza. American (three different types of diners), Italian, and Japanese food are covered. The last restaurant takes place on a TV stage complete with an audience that cheers when Flo makes great moves. I love this — it’s exciting and different. Who doesn’t love an applause?

You get a feel for the customers — those who order slow vs. fast, eat slow vs. fast, lose patience slow vs. fast. Other than that, they don’t have much personality. Some diner-style game customers have great personality while others are bland. This falls in between.

No mini-games in Cooking Dash. Although, the game comes with a Story Mode and Endless Mode. They are as you would expect. Story mode tells what’s going on with Cookie’s show and why Flo moves from restaurant to restaurant. Endless mode just repeats everything for as long as you can. Five stars appear on top of the screen. As long as you have one star, you keep on going. Once the last star disappears, end of game.

Customers sit at the counter instead of tables, another nice change of pace from the Diner series’ tables. Two grills sit on both sides of the kitchen. Often times, customers would order one item from each side. Occasionally, they’ll order just one item. In one restaurant, the left grill contains French fries, onion wings, and wings. The other side contains fish, shrimp, and lobster.

I’m so grateful the game takes care of matching dishes for me. For example, I have one customer requesting rice and kebabs while another wants soy beans and octopus. Sometimes, I mix up the two items, but no matter — Flo gets it right. The only time it goes wrong if you put together something no one orders. That’s when it turns crazy — when you have lots of grill requests.

A customer ordering fish and chips sends Flo off to the left side to throw the fries in the fryer and the right side to toss the fish on the grill. A green indicator lets you know it’s cooking and when it comes full circle and blinks, the dish is ready. Wait too long and the food overcooks, but you can still serve it — just no bonus points for perfectly cooked food. Sometimes you’ll have to add condiments to the dish.

Upgrades appear between levels with them falling into two groups: looks and function. The looks change the counter, floor, windows, and so on. While function speeds Flo and Grandma, adds a coffeemaker and jukebox, and faster stoves. I have no problem buying all of the upgrades at least two levels before reaching the end of the round.

Chaining remains important as in the other Dash games. They can make or break the goal level. Also, customers have different colored clothes. When you match the clothes to the chairs, you gain bonus points. You can even get 3x, 4x, etc. if you keep putting the same colored customer on the like chair.

It doesn’t take me long to get through 50 levels. I have to replay a few several times before I can pass it. Those who can conquer Diner games will find this too easy. Those who are tired of the difficulty level (me) in the Diner games will appreciate this one. Cooking Dash takes a different approach from the Diner Dash series and it works well.

Download Cooking Dash from Big Fish Games.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

And she cooks, too! When Cookie the Chef leaves Flo’s Diner to pursue a career on a popular cooking reality TV show, he creates a shortage of chefs in DinerTown by inviting them all to appear as guest stars. It’s up to Flo to pick up the slack with a whole new set of food service skills! Help Flo and Grandma Florence keep five DinerTown restaurants up and running…if you can stand the heat!

• Over 50 levels of game play
• Master the art of perfectly prepared meals in five different restaurants
• 3D rendered characters add dimension to the animation

Play Cooking Dash.

Quinn returns in all new wedding planning adventures in which she competes against other wedding planners. Wedding Dash 2: Rings around the World sees Quinn planning weddings in five countries. Photographer Joe Wright joins Quinn’s crew and captures memories for the bride and groom.

This one retains much of the original Wedding Dash features including most of the guests, Bridezilla, funky dancing guests, and fires for Quinn to put out. The action remains the same: You seat the guests based on their preferences whether it be at a specific table or with (or NOT) someone. Take their gifts and put them on the bride and groom’s table then serve them a three-course meal.

New in this one is Groom-Kong who comes out when he sees his bride not happy puts an end to the level. We also meet a couple of new guests including two pairs that must always have two seats together. Social butterfly Chloe and her daughter, Kathleen make a pair. Chloe isn’t as popular as she used to be since becoming a mom. We also have twins who don’t have much patience and don’t act very social.

Forgetful Grandpa won’t order anything unless you wait too long to serve him. So you must keep track of what he has eaten and what to serve next. The Conan O’Brien look-alike who might be a hot dog eating champion returns as do Diane, Derek, and Uncle Ernie (the drunk). We have another uncle — a handsome one and everyone wants to sit next to him.

We also have to tell Joe when to snap a picture. At the end of the level, you can view captured snapshots — but it’s really just head shots of the guests. Still, adding Joe works well.

Wedding Dash 2: Rings around the World doesn’t treat us to many new features, which might disappoint some folks. However, those who just want more of Quinn and company will be happy except for one thing: This one is miles harder than the original. It takes me at least 20 tries to finally beat level 4.6.

The planning stage also returns with decorations, food choices, and bride and groom transportation. Sometimes the bride’s request doesn’t provide enough information to make a decision. Nonetheless, we receive more varied options from brides with stomach problems and actors to nature lovers and lovers of ’50s movies. Even when you pick a wrong item, you’ll see your incorrect selection appear in the level. So it’s nice to see we have control over customization — right or wrong.

The top notch graphics and swinging music compel you to keep trying no matter how many times it takes. Plus, the game brings about lots of smiles in watching the comedy while you frantically meet guest requests and stop disasters.

Wedding Dash 2: Rings around the World comes with two modes: story and endless. I never bother with endless as it doesn’t appeal to me. With five locales at 10 levels each, we get 50 fun-filled levels of battling and keeping brides and guests happy.

I have a confession: I prefer Wedding Dash to Diner Dash series. The wedding guests provide more entertainment than the customers in Diner Dash. Boy, oh boy… this one takes a lot of patience as you’ll have to try various approaches to reach the goal score. If you haven’t played the first one, you can skip it and go right to this one as it has more. Considering the new scenarios, locales, and guest types, Wedding Dash fans will be happy to help Quinn again.

Download Wedding Dash 2: Rings around the World.