What can a down-on-their-luck soap opera manager do? Hire Flo and the rest of the DinerToons, and produce the best soap opera ever in Soap Opera Dash! Help Rosie and her aspiring soap star Simon make it big in this fast-paced time management game. Get scripts to the actors, do their hair, manage their wardrobe and apply their makeup. Then it's time for props, cameras and actually filming the show. Do you have what it takes to keep the actors happy and make it big in the business?
Soap Opera Dash is the latest installment in the Dash franchise, by the people who produced some of the best-selling time management games such as the Diner Dash and Wedding Dash series. Adding on to the tried-and-true formula that made the previous Dash games bona fide hits, Soap Opera Dash adds new game concepts and mechanics and brings our favorite characters from these hit games into a new setting, taking on the job of helping Rosie film her soap opera.
In the introduction to the game, Rosie is told by her producers that they will not go ahead with her soap opera idea. Now without a job, she walks home dejected until she bumps into aspiring actor Simon (who just happens to be her high school crush), who has also just lost his job. Thinking they might be able to get this soap opera idea to work, Rosie has a chat about it with Flo (of Diner Dash fame) and very soon Flo, Quinn and the rest of the DinerToons are all on board Rosie's project to create her soap opera and turn Simon into a star!
Soap Opera Dash plays similar to the restaurant management games such as Diner Dash. However, instead of seating and feeding hungry customers and keeping them happy, you will have to help soap actors get ready for their shoot. And you don't want unhappy actors going all diva on you! You need to walk these actors through their paces, from giving them scripts, to doing their hair, wardrobe and makeup, to getting the props and camera ready.
Your first task is to decide who will play which part in your soap opera. Who will play the lovers, who will be the jealous ex and who will be the evil genius? You can cast rising star Simon or any of the DinerToons such as Flo and Quinn in these roles. As the game progresses, the scenes will get more complicated and more roles will be available for you to fill.
A typical day in filming a soap opera will have you running around like a headless chicken. Firstly, you will have an assistant preparing the scripts for the actors, who will be waiting on not-so-comfy chairs. After the actors read the scripts, they are ready for prep work. They need to be dragged to the hair section where you will give them the perfect hairdo. Then it's off to wardrobe where you'll help them into their outfits. Then it's makeup time. In the midst of all that, you will need to move the required props onto stage as well. And once you find the cameraman (who will be goofing off somewhere random on set), it's show time! And then it's time to clean up the stage, ready for the next act.
As if all that wasn't complicated enough, there is a whole lot of other stuff you need to micro-manage while all this is happening. Like the other Dash games, each actor is color-coded, and you score more points if you can match actors with similarly-colored items and stations. Also back are the match-em games that randomly pop up. While working on an actor's hairdo for example, a small screen will pop up requiring you to select a hairstyle that matches what the actor wants. You don't have all day though, as the game is still running and everything else on the set still needs your attention. And the actors will keep getting more unhappy the longer they have to wait for you.
A new addition is the order in which the actors have to get ready. For example, the first act might require Flo and Simon on stage. You will therefore need to get them prepped up first, otherwise you'll create a bottleneck at the filming sequence. You will have to do this no matter how efficient a different order might be, or how unhappy the other actors are. Also interesting is the actual movie set you see in the game. Different scenes are filmed throughout each level, from the hospital emergency room to the diner. The actors also do a little act, but due to the fast-paced nature of the game, watching them might cause you to lose your focus and time management rhythm, and turn the set into one chaotic mess.
Soap Opera Dash is a deserving new addition in the Dash stable of time management games, giving the time management game genre a new spin. While it challenges you to manage a whole host of different elements to create optimum chains of tasks, you will also be entertained by the quirky characters and their acting. If you like games such as Diner Dash and similar time management games like Nanny Mania, you will love Soap Opera Dash.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
You can read more about Soap Opera Dash at
http://www.game-tycoon.com/soap-opera-dash.html