The year 2004 was a good year for some light and fun games. It was this year when Diner Dash was released, and I found myself playing it along with some other games like Text Twist, Granny in Paradise, Bounce Out, Super PileUp and many more!

I remember I was maybe 8 or 9, I would go with my mom to her office during Saturdays and play games while she's not doing any heavy tasks. She would let me play these games and one of them was Diner Dash.

Objective

It is a strategy game where you control Flo (character) who runs a restaurant and you serve food to the customers. The objective is pretty simple: just serve them food and make them happy so your business will continue.

It sounds pretty easy but it actually challenges your decision-making skills, time management, multitasking, and how you pay attention.

How It's Played

The game starts with a little story about Flo getting tired of being in her regular 5-9 job. She decides to open up her restaurant.

Then, it shows you how to play the game:

First, you're gonna drag the customers from the arrival area to their seats. They will just wait there if you don't do anything. They act like real people. The more you let them wait longer to get served, the more they will become unhappy and will later lose interest in your restaurant. The hearts above their heads is their happiness meter. So you have to attend to them as soon as possible. :)

Once they are seated, they will be given a menu automatically and you just have to wait til they raise their hands to order. You just click on them and drop their orders in the order queue or something. You can see the chef in the background cooking the food.

The food will be shown on the counter and you just have to take it to the right table.

Once they are done eating, the customers will raise their hand again to ask for the bill and you have to attend to them and clean the tables afterwards. When the table's empty, you can now drag another customers to the same table.

And you're ready to play!

What to pay attention to

Score - The other things to pay attention to is the Goal which is located at the top left corner of the screen. To pass the level, you need to exceed that number.

On the top right corner is where the time is located. Obviously you have to complete the goal before time runs out.

In the next level, color coding will be implemented. Basically, when you drag the customers to the seat with the same color as them, you'll get extra points. It's okay if you don't do it though, but it's better of course. This is where your decision-making skills is challenged cos you have to be fast with it and your score gets challenged too.

This is what I meant when I said your decision-making will be challenged. As you can see, there are only two 4-seaters and the other one is occupied. 1 group arrived and the available table has extra points in there only if you drag blue ones to it.

If you drag the red ones to the blue seats, the points will reset. Since it will take some time for the other table to be available again, you have to decide to sacrifice the points or make them angry by waiting.

Happiness meter replenish - The next levels will have improvements, like this one: The restaurant added a coffee machine which lets you serve coffee for free. By making this, it increases their happiness and you can use this to make up for the times when you make them wait. The happier the customers, the more scores you get.

Different types of customers - There are also different types of customers. Just like in real life, they have different attitudes, behavior, etc.. Senior customers are patient and slow ; businesswomen are very impatient cos they value their time - and so on.

Queue - Of course, don't forget the queue. You can see the panic is real cos my restaurant is getting famous they can't wait to taste my specialty!!!

Just look at the lower left how I lost a group of businesswomen cos they impatient AF and ma'am there's no available seats okay do you want to eat on the floor???!!!!

Gameplay

Here's a sample gameplay and you can see how there's so many customers in the end. :(

If you can't view the video cos it didn't embed, you can visit this link.

Conclusion

It's a great game and one of the earliest games that I remember having the restaurant theme. It puts you into the waiter's perspective and makes you realize how hard their job is though it may sound easy for most of us. You can't even see them complaints from the customers on game and we know how some customers can be really harsh and entitled aka the Karens so this is really just the very few things that we can see through the game.

It made my childhood enjoyable and playing this again is really relaxing unlike other games where it's too realistic and stressful cos playing multiplayer I just really find it stressful lol.

If I'm gonna give a rating, erhmm... maybe 5/5 because I really like this game lol.

Thanks for reading!