Review Diner Dash: Seasonal Snack Pack Developer: Play First Publisher: Play First Genre: Casual Game Release Date: September 2008 Platform: Review by Karla Munger January 9, 2009		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:
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We thought it would be fun to review some of the casual games we currently have available in our JA Casual Game Center. Needless to say, these games are very addictive and while our enthusiastic reviews are, for the most part short, the time spent playing these games is not. Once you have read the review, drop by the JA Casual Game Center and download a free trial version of the game for yourself, but remember - you have been warned!

Ahem...okay, class, this review will make heavy use of acronyms, and some of what I'm about to say can be confusing. So please listen up.

Diner Dash (DD) games -- and Flo, herself -- have gone through considerable changes since I first loaded up the original back in 2006.

Original Flo

Current Flo

Before I lanuch into a review of the game at hand, I feel a little background, as I understand it, is in order. Folks new to the DD franchise who visit the PlayFirst site could be baffled by what's going on.

The first three DDs are self-contained and play as any time-management game would. After the aforementioned original, we have Restaurant Rescue (DD2) and Flo on the Go (DD3). So far, so good.

Now, let's pay Hometown Hero (DD4) a brief visit. There are two versions of this game: the one I played and reviewed which was released first; and a subsequent Gourmet version (DD4 Gourmet).

DD4 Goumet offers more extras (500+ clothing and decor items, for instance), has a multi-player feature, and can accommodate restaurant add-ons at $4.99 a pop. Folks who had the original version were out of luck when it came to playing the add-ons. It's not clear why PlayFirst chose to do things this way.

Okay, let's fast-forward to the present again. What we have before us now is Diner Dash: Seasonal Snack Pack. If this sounds add-onish, there's a good reason. The five restaurants bundled in this game represent the add-ons for DD4 Gourmet. So those who have bought and played the add-ons will find nothing new here.

I feel I should point out that purchased à la carte from PlayFirst, the five additional restaurants come to $24.95. In contrast, the Seasonal Snack Pack bundle is $19.95.

That having been said, the restaurants in Seasonal Snack Pack are all new to me. They consist of the summertime-themed Coral Cove; Crypt Cafe, decked out for Halloween; the Thanksgiving-themed Hometown Harvest; Winter Wonderland, which features a ski lodge; and Romantic Rendezvous, a snazzy, upscale establishment with Valentine's Day trappings.

The first thing I noticed about Seasonal Snack Pack is that either my skill at time-management games has skyrocketed (I doubt it), or the first 50 levels are quite easy (more likely). I had no difficulty making expert in all of them -- in some cases, 15,000+ points past expert. I think this may be due to a couple of things: (1) For the most part, customers have more patience than in previous DD games; and (2) Many levels are quite long, allowing players more time to build up scores.

Interestingly, I've seen a lot of player reviews that say Seasonal Snack Pack is too difficult. This has me wondering if we'd even played the same game.

Achieving all expert scores unlocks five Expert Levels -- one for each restaurant. It's in one of these Expert Levels that the game turns brutal. For some unfathomable reason, this almost always happens in time-management games -- and always far enough along in the game that it doesn't show up in the free evaluation period (typically an hour). So unless players have read up on the game beforehand, they'll purchase the game unaware of the brick wall they'll be hitting at some point.

In the interest of avoiding a spoiler, I won't mention the level in which the escalation of difficulty occurs. Mercifully, however, it isn't as bad as Flo's Inferno in DD4. I was able to snag an Expert Score after five or six tries.

Unike its predecessors, Seasonal Snack Pack's first-level tutorial covers only a few basics, so I suggest that any newbies to the franchise have a good look at the game's help files. It would also help to explore the Diner Dash Neighborhood site at http://www.playfirst.com/dinerdash/.

Okay -- still with me? I hope so.

None of what I've said so far means that the collection of restaurants in Seasonal Snack Pack is bad. Far from it: I enjoyed them considerably. The graphics, animation, music and sounds in all five restaurants are quite pleasing. Two of them, Coral Cove and Hometown Harvest, feature outdoor settings. In a nice touch, the lighting in Hometown Harvest changes gradually from daytime to dusk.

I especially enjoyed Crypt Cafe, with its eyeball stew (a witch does the cooking), zombies who mill around, an owner's portrait that watches the proceedings, and some decidedly undead-looking customers. In fact, the lovebirds look worse than I do when I get out of bed in the morning. Now that's scary.

One caveat, though, for you arachnophobes: there are spiders here. And starting in Level 7, a rather large one crawls around on the floor perilously close to Flo's podium.

Seasonal Snack Pack retains a lot of things from the original five restaurants in Hometown Hero (DD4). It offers few new menu items and there are no new customer types. But it does have some different outfits for Flo and some new restaurant upgrades.

I do recommend Seasonal Snack Pack despite the relative lack of challenge in its first 50 levels and overkill in one of the Expert Levels. If you are, however, looking for more consistent levels of difficulty in a time-management game, I suggest trying any of the other DDs, the Cake Mania series, Turbo Pizza or Turbo Subs.

I have a few parting comments now about the Diner Dash franchise. Five additional restaurant add-ons have been released since the five that are represented here. These restaurants are also available as a bundle called Diner Dash: Flo Through Time.

As far as I know, DD4 Gourmet is the only DD game that can accommodate add-ons. So I can only surmise that the five new restaurants, if purchased separately, become part of that game. Folks who don't own HH Gourmet are again obliged to go with the bundled version.

It would certainly help if PlayFirst would provide some clarification about all of this in a prominent place on the Diner Dash Neighborhood site. I've explored the site (including the forums), but I've been unable to find anything definitive.

One thing's for sure: the Diner Dash franchise -- which has also spawned a slew of other "Dash" games, such as the recently released Parking Dash and Fitness Dash -- seems to be going its own way, to the point that it's no longer comprised of self-contained units and represents more than a traditional casual game series. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see other successful casual series follow suit.

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