Dinner Dash

Have you ever wanted to be in charge of a busy food business? Then you might want to tuck into Diner Dash!

This game puts you in charge of a diner with a limited number of tables and seating. Each day you’re charged with a new mission to reach a set number of tips for your efforts. By doing well you’ll not just reach your target but smash it and get a gold star which gives you an even better score.

First things first, you have to seat the customers as they appear – and be quite quick about it as they are quite impatient and won’t tip you well for letting them wait too long, or worse, they’ll leave before you even get to sit them down. You have some tables for two, some for four and even up to six in later stages. The customers are colour coded blue and red and will tip more if they sit at a corresponding table.

Once you’ve seated your customers you have to use your waitress to tend to their needs. Again being quick means that you will receive bigger tips and an even greater chance to progress to the next level. You’ll get extra cash if you work smart and not just fast. By tending to two tables at once, whether it’s taking their order and having it prepared by the chef, taking the orders from the kitchen to the table, taking their dirty dishes to the dishwasher or collecting their tips.

As you will probably know through experience in eating out, there are various tricks to the trade. For example to keep people happy and to get more tips, not only are waiting staff very polite, helpful and attentive, but they like to serve coffee or free drinks while you wait. This is also included in the game, as you progress you can afford to buy more goodies to boost your sales and profits.

Controls are pretty simple and involve using a mixture of both d-pad and keypad. The d-pad mainly is used for selecting and seating your customers whereas the number pad highlights all the tables and options. For example, pressing 1 will move your waitress to the kitchen area to place customers’ orders; pressing 3 will take dirty dishes to the dishwasher, pressing 3 twice will move your waitress to the coffee machine, whereas pressing 4 to 9 will serve those tables.

Rapidly this game goes from a few sequenced key presses which you can easily handle in the first couple of levels to a very tricky variety of key presses which will test your memory, attention and reflexes in equal high doses. Before you know it, you’ll be struggling to handle the traffic through the doors as well as coping with the variety of customers – both young and old.

In the end then, this game is definitely enjoyable and gives you a very brief insight into the catering business and tests your attention to detail and responses. You’ll be rewarded through your practice and patience and you don’t have to worry about failing at any stage as you get to do it again until you manage to do it right. Every stage will challenge you in a slightly different way and as you get to influence it throughout you get more out of it when you put more in – so this is very rewarding.

Rating 83%

Positives

Light-hearted food management fun

Plenty of variety and challenges increase with every stage

Lots of attention to detail make it more rewarding and adapts to your style

Negatives

Sounds aren’t the greatest

Graphics are pretty low quality

Quite repetitive