Soap Opera Dash

With all the Dash casual time management games PlayFirst has created, you almost have to wonder what the company could possibly come up with next. The answer is Soap Opera Dash, a frantic time management simulation where players have to help Rosie work with the residents of DinerTown to put on a successful soap opera. Unlike some of the other Dash entries, Soap Opera Dash basically throws you into a frantic situation with a few tutorials, hoping you pick up enough from the brief introduction to make it through frenzied episodes of a new series. It’s fun, but you better be ready to work and have a reliable mouse if you want to succeed.

Rosie wants the soap opera life

Rosie wants to create a soap opera, but can’t seem to find someone to give her a chance. Her prospective producer loves her script and ideas, but won’t help her out because he think she doesn’t have the star power necessary to make it work. As she’s walking away from the studio, she runs into Simon the celebrity, a high school friend she always idolized. He’s just been fired from the show he was on. Rosie sees her opportunity and uses flattery to convince him that he’d be the perfect fit for her show as the star.

She then starts a grass-roots operation to make her own soap opera, enlisting the help of Flo, Quinn and a number of other DinerTown residents to make her show happen. It starts out being filmed in a garage and shown on Dinertube and, with a little luck, could end up becoming a hit.

Frenzy on the set!

Rosie’s schedule in Soap Opera Dash makes Flo and Quinn’s jobs seem like playtime. She really goes to work. There is tons to do in each level. Rosie has to deliver scripts, take people to makeup, do their makeup, take them to wardrobe, pick out their clothes, take them to makeup, do their makeup, perhaps bring them ice tea, send them to a waiting chair while the scene is set up, place the proper props and get the camera man to start shooting a scene. Which means lots of dragging, dropping and then clicking people to get the actions at each station done. The bottom of the screen shows how many scenes must be shot, so you know how much longer you have to play. Plus, there’s a color-bonus for dragging similar colored actors to the right color stations. When an episode (level) is done, judges grade you on your performance.

Soap Opera Dash is a lot of work, even early on when you only have two colors of actors (red and blue) to worry about. Especially since you can’t just drop an actor at the next station and expect him or her to automatically get her hair done or so on. You have to drag them there, then click them, to make things happen. When you’ve got eight or more actors in play, and you’re trying to manage all of them, it’s easy to forget to go back and click on them while they’re at the stations. Which means you fall behind, they get mad and you risk producing a subpar episode. Especially when you have to take extra time to personally pick out the right hairdo, outfit or makeup for certain actors. It’s a very involved game that won’t tolerate slackers. This means you have to be familiar with time management games and the general Dash gameplay if you want to succeed.

What is neat is that PlayFirst really tried to add some elements to make it feel like Rosie is working on a show. Before each season starts, you place actors to cast them in certain roles. Each level is referred to as an episode, as well. And, for the season finale, you pick the two main stars and the theme for the episode. After a season is done, you can visit a town square area to see bulletins and ads advertising the soap. It’s a nice touch that makes things a little more fun and unique.

Fun, if you can keep up

Soap Opera Dash, despite being well organized, still manages to be one of the most complicated entries in the Dash time management series. Rosie has so much to do and players have to be constantly dragging, dropping, clicking and scanning the area to keep up with the constant flow of actors. It’s more difficult in the introductory levels than games like Diner Dash and Wedding Dash are around the halfway point. It’s still very well made and a lot of fun, but it’s the kind of game consummate Dash fans are going to enjoy most, since they’ll know right away how to play and keep up. It’s a lot of work for a casual game!

Review by Jenni Lada

Cake Mania: To The Max!

Jill Evans is back for Cake Mania: To the Max, the sixth part of this highly popular time management brand. But what can be done in a series that has already covered time-traveling, managing different shops, or building bakeries from scratch? Well, it’s time-traveling again, only this time around the player will get a glimpse into Jill’s past, namely, her high school days in the 1980s.

Cake Mania: To the Max features a whopping 100 levels, and can be played in both timed and relaxed mode. As with former titles the first couple of levels are somewhat boring and slow, but it is definitely worth it to keep hanging on. In contrast to the last two games in the series you are not managing different shops - in fact the whole game takes place in one single bakery. This might sound a bit monotonous at first, but veteran Cake Mania fans will surely appreciate the focused but more substantial gameplay resulting from this change.

Basically, all you have to do is prepare cakes for customers. By clicking shapes, frostings in different colors, varying toppings or fruits and creating multilayered cakes according to the incoming orders of your customers Jill earns money that she needs to pass the day successfully. This process of cake creation is complicated enough on its own, but not only do your customers lose patience rather quickly, they each have distinct personalities whose behavior affects the gameplay considerably.

The gypsy, for example, will show you the orders of other customers immediately; the oil baron will not allow you to serve other customers before his order is finished, while the wizard will turn all customers into cheerleaders, thereby changing their orders. Those special - and not always helpful - abilities are not the only interesting features about Jill’s customers, though. Some of them dislike each other, such as the bride and the business man. If they stand next to each other they will lose patience, which brings us to a welcome new feature of Cake Mania: To the Max: swapping.

Now you are able to swap customers to a different place, which adds a whole new level of challenge and strategy to the game. Not only do you have to plan according to the abilities of certain customers, but you also have to keep an even closer eye on their patience, because details like that can be neglected quickly in a game as hectic as Cake Mania: To the Max. It is also good to see that the game has kept interesting features such as the rush bonus, for which you have to do the same action three times in a row numerous times for it to be activated. The rush bonus then finishes every action immediately, which makes for a frantic but entertaining experience.

The upgrade system works as smoothly as ever and has been enhanced quite a bit. Besides the well-known upgrades for machines that include both speed boosts and new toppings, oven slots and fruits, the player is also able to upgrade the interior of the bakery in ways that actually impact the gameplay. In the beginning the upgrades seem rather expensive, but this impression is deceiving, and the whole system will surely please time management perfectionists. The ability to swap or sell machines only improves this already stellar feature.

What has always been interesting about this series, and matters even more in this latest sequel, is that the challenge of it never depended on the timed aspect, but more on dealing with the varying customer types and handling all those different shapes, layers, colors and toppings at the same time. While the first ten or twenty levels will be a breeze for experienced players, later levels get extremely challenging and at times even frustrating. Fortunately it is possible to choose between timed and relaxed mode at the beginning of each level, so that you will never really get stuck.

The graphics of Cake Mania: To the Max game are absolutely gorgeous and charming, and it is nice to see how much this game has evolved since the first part. The controls are flawless save for one glaring oversight: you are still not able to cancel actions, which is especially frustrating in a detail-oriented game like this, where one wrong cake can seriously mess up the player’s strategy.

But all in all there is no doubt that we fully recommend Cake Mania: To the Max to all avid time management game fans. The series goes back to its original roots, which might be disappointing for some people, but has been managed excellently nevertheless. A charming storyline, a complex upgrade system, proven gameplay with some interesting tweaks and a far above average playtime provide an entertaining experience for fans of the series and newcomers alike.

Review by David Becker