by Hui Goh

Created on: June 13, 2008   Last Updated: August 15, 2010

OVERVIEW
Dairy Dash will definitely appeal to fans of the Diner Dash and Cake Mania series of games. Dairy Dash is quintessentially Diner Dash, but with a twist. Your setting is a farm, and your customers are farm animals. Don't be fooled though, you will still need to please them - your cow will still fume as much as a human customer would in your diner. Instead of plates and cutlery to clear, you now have animal produce to gather. And in homage to its roots, Flo makes a cameo (as always), as one of your farm's top clients.

GAME PLAY
Fans of Diner Dash will have no difficulty getting their heads around this. Gameplay is simple enough. It is a point and click time management game. The difficulty lies within coordinating all the numerous activities that have to be done, while at the same time, chain-linking to gain maximum points. What might be potentially off-putting is the large screen area. Unlike Diner Dash, where tables were closely located, the farm animals/plants were placed too far apart, which makes it hard to scroll, especially if you are using a touchpad. It was also, occasionally, hard to click on certain animals (you had to click on tiny speech bubbles, which might prove difficult in a race against time!).

GRAPHICS
I did not find the graphics attractive, an area that the Diner Dash series has much to improve upon (much unlike its counterpart, Cake Mania or the Turbo series). Certain items, such as wool, blended with the background, and was hard to pick out.

SOUND
The sound was unobtrusive, and does not distract from the gameplay. The warning alerts whenever an animal lost a 'patience heart' was clear enough.

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
There are a variety of activities in Dairy Dash, so be prepared for much more complex gameplay compared to Diner Dash. Different animals/plants have different needs. The key difficulty in this is to coordinate all their needs, while maintaining the business (such as manning phone calls, and repairing broken trucks). Dairy Dash has added a new element to the original Diner Dash concept - the bonus level - a great idea to break the monotony.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Overall Pros: Fun varied activities, good storyline, challenging gameplay.
Overall Cons: Unimpressive graphics, screen area too wide, occasionally hard to click.

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