PlayFirst announced the availability of Diner Dash: Home Hero the fourth Diner Dash game in the series. Diner Dash: Home Hero is not just another Diner Dash game. This time around players are able to buy restaurants and buy clothes for your character. Players are also able to share their designs online with the Diner Dash community at dinerdash.com.

The game comes with more than five hundred different clothing items and items to decorate your restaurants. Players are able to buy more items at 49 cents each. Along with clothing and decorations, players can now play either cooperative or competitive multi-player. When playing online, players can use their characters they created and play in their restaurants they created.

“The casual games market is growing nicely, but sticking with standalone games at the current $20-per-game business model isn’t giving casual gamers enough of what they want,” said John Welch, president and CEO, PlayFirst. “With the launch of Diner Dash: Hometown Hero, we debut personalization and sharing features found in social networks and virtual worlds, but with a ‘casual’ approach. This means accessible themes like diners and a wide range of price points, but most importantly a completely free base product — which is free forever, not just for 30 or 60 minutes.”

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RealNetworks has announced they are trying to expand their casual games focus onto Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare. There hasn’t been a lot of information released regarding RealNetworks moving into console gaming, but RealNetworks’ VP of game content, Erik Goossens, admitted that work on consoles “is happening as we speak.” Erik Goossens said this in an interview with GameDailyBiz.

There is no word about the games that will be released or when they will be released. I am sure there will be more news to come. Expanding onto consoles seems like a really good idea for RealNetworks, just adds more platforms to play their casual games on.

Thanks Developmag

Father Scruff gets a call and finds out that he has lost his job. He gathers the family together to let everyone know that they are going to have to sell the house. Grampa Scruff remembers that he has a secret that may just save the house. Grampa Scruff is kind of old so he can’t really remember all of the details. You help Grampa find the items he needs to remember the secret in The Scruffs.

The Scruffs is a hidden object game with a bit of a twist. There is a mini game that you can play every time you locate a family picture. The mini game has you find the scribbles on the picture. There are twenty different scribbles that happen and you need to always find the new one.

The levels in the game are similar to any hidden object game. There are a few locations where you need to locate the objects. You can use the map to go from place to place so you do not need to find all of the objects in one room at the same time. The objects you need to find are in a list on the side of the screen. Some of the objects are a bit difficult to find.

When you can’t find an item there is help. In each room you search, there are bones hidden as well. The bones are your help. There is a little dog that helps you find objects and you “pay” him with bones. No bones no help. The game decides which item they are going to help you find. You click the dog and an item in the list turns red and that is the item you get help finding. The dog will start to bark and jump around when you get close to the item.

The graphics in The Scruffs are a bit on the cartoonish side, but that fits the game. The family are cartoon characters and the items in the room are more cartoonish than real life looking.

The Scruffs is a hidden object game with a bit of a twist. The twist makes it entertaining to play. I like the mini games that come up. There are also puzzles between levels that lead you to the artifacts. The puzzle are torn pieces of paper that need to be assembled correctly. All of these features make The Scruffs more than just another hidden object game.

hell-tech is a Greek publisher and distributor of casual games. They have secured the distribution rights to Jack Keane. hell-tech will produce a Greek version of Jack Keane to be released in October 2007. Hopefully they make the date considering that October is only a few days away.

Jack Keane is a point and click adventure game. Jack finds himself traveling all over the globe to try and foil the villain, Doctor T, plans and save the world.

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Are you still hooked on Peggle? Wondering how to become a Peggle Master? Well now is your chance to get all of your deepest Peggle questions answered. PopCap Games has announced the availability of a Peggle Strategy Guide.

Peggle is an extremely addictive puzzle game. The object of the game is to get the ball to hit all of the orange pegs on the board.

To access the strategy guide click here.