Fashion Dash - a perfect fit!

PlayFirst is being extremely productive lately. Their latest release is the next one from the Dash Pass set - an opportunity for customers to buy 5 Dash games for $10 each. It is Fashion Dash - a time-management game in the environment of a fashion shop so habitual for casual gamers nowadays. The game presents nothing really innovative or unique, but it's quite a nice example of the genre.

When you are left unemplyed, it's bad, isn't it? Especially if your last salary is paid in fabric... But sometimes it's a great chance to start a new life!

That's what Coco, a young and ambitious stylist from Danceriffic show thought when the show was taken off the air. And with a little help of her good friend Flo (you surely know this girl, don't you?) she decided to open up an exclusive retail shop in their native Dinertown helping people find some last minute wear. While her business developed she had an idea to gather her dancing gang again and start everything from the very beginning. But that requires quite an amount of money. Will Coco be able to collect the necessary sum? That depends totally on you.

So you get a store and a line of anxious customers wishing to purchase your tailored clothes. The sequence of acions is nothing extraordinary - you drag a customer to a chair near a vacant dressing booth, hand him/her a catalogue, take the order and measurements, take the order to the seamstress, then fetch the ready garment, let the customer try it on, take the money and clear the booth for the next client. Easy as a piece of cake, but each stage has its peculiarities. When you choose a seat for a customer, take into consideration, first, the color of his clothing, for you get a matching bonus if you match it with the color of the booth. Second, pay your attention to the type of the customer, because you can also get bonuses for seating, for instance, young men next to young women for them to be able to flirt or grannies next to other women to get a Gossip Bonus.

There are also Chaining Bonus, which is quite usual for PlayFirst games (you get points multiplier for performing several similar actions in a row) and Fast Service Bonus (try to serve customers within seconds after they ask for help).

Later in the game the game play becomes much more varied due to a number of pacifiers, such as tea or radio, added, as well as a possility to sell additional goods: jewelry, handbags, shoes and perfumes. All of these are really helpful when many customers are waiting for their turn to be attended to (and even in the early levels you will find yourself short of booths very soon) and when you need to earn some additional cash to pass a level. On some of the levels (but only after level 3-5) you will have a chance to use services of an assistant, which gives you four hands instead of two!

One more feature, which some of you may love and some be annoyed with - the changing layout of your store from level to level. You never know how your booths will be situated next time. Still, all the main points such as waiting area, seamstress, clothes tree and beverage table retain their positions, so I'd say this serves to diversifying your game experience a bit.

There are some upgrades in Fashion Dash, but you don't have to pay a single cent for them - you just choose the one you prefer every several levels. The upgrades are also quite customary - they increase your speed or customers' patience.

On the whole I can say that though the game features nothing really out-of-the-way, it's a nice and high quality example of time-management games. Definitely worth a try.

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