Surviving many bad dates can make a single person cranky, but it’s worthwhile when finding the right person to marry. Next comes planning the wedding, which sometimes can feel like a disastrous date. And then the worst wedding nightmare of all — the wedding planner bowing out too close to the wedding, but not close enough to the big day that all the work has been done. Instead, the wedding planner turns the already nervous bride into a panicky one.

The wedding planner hadn’t taken care of the appetizers, side dishes, main dish, honeymoon, flowers, or cake. One bride faced with this situation lucks out with help from her friend, Quinn who happens to be a friend of Flo’s from the popular Diner Dash series that started the game genre often referred to as “Diner Dash style.” Such games involve a lot of frenzy where the main character must accomplish tasks, keep customers happy and reach the goal for each level to advance to the next level.

Wedding Dash has the advantage of being a Diner Dash spin off complete with the same cartoon-style graphics, story line and likeable characters. Welcome to the wedding-themed version of Diner Dash. One might think after three versions of Diner Dash that the series could start to turn formulaic. On the contrary, Wedding Dash earns its success. Sure, Flo appears in the game on occasion, but Quinn does the heavy-duty work.

After saving her friend’s wedding, Quinn wins another job and soon the weddings start pouring in. As an accidental wedding planner, Quinn starts small by holding backyard weddings. As business grows, she moves up to a hotel, ship, island and castle. Before the reception begins, Quinn selects three things based on the bridge and groom’s background and interests. For each correct selection, the player earns $100 toward the next level of the game.

Players, in the role of Quinn, seat attendees at the tables ensuring they seat the guest with the right person or away from the wrong person. Quinn’s assistant picks up the gifts taking them to the bride and groom, feeds three dishes to every guest and occasionally does special orders such as a request for a glass of wine or pass on a song request to the DJ.

Quinn doesn’t sit around as she puts out the fires, sometimes literally when the kitchen turns smoky. She also soothes the aunt, handles the drunken uncle discreetly, shoos away bees (carefully) and dogs, stops the cake table from falling and averts any other potential disaster. Upgrades appear from time to time giving players the chance to speed up staff, increase the food table size or gain points whenever a guest steps out on the dance floor.

Where Wedding Dash stands out is in the variety. The venues, the wedding couple, the guests, the potential disasters and the funny comments from the couple keep the game moving, As the game progresses, guests ask to move and sit next to someone else keeping things hopping. The challenge increases as you progress, while at times the situation turns frantic forcing the player to replay the level too many times. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s where the biggest frustration with the game dwells. As with most Diner games, each level has a goal score and an expert score. Reaching the expert score rarely happens in this one.

The other nitpick is that clicks don’t always “take.” Click on two dishes and after walking over to the table to serve them to guests, you realize your waitress only has one dish in hand. That wastes precious time which could mean the difference between making and not making the next level.

Typical of a good casual game, two modes are available — the story mode is known as Career Mode and ongoing mode with no story is Endless Reception (plays exactly like it sounds!). No matter the footsteps, Wedding Dash deserves its applause and a toast to many days of gaming bliss.

P.S. Southpaws, Quinn is a lefty!

Download and try Wedding Dash for 30 minutes.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista
• Pentium III 700MHz or faster processor
• 800×600 minimum screen resolution
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 25MB available disk space

System Requirements: Mac

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 MHz or faster, or G5 or Intel processor
• 800×600 minimum screen resolution
• 25MB available disk space

Tags: meryl k. evans, games