This was the 4th game in the series, and it was wonderfully ambitious and groundbreaking. I was tasked with designing a multiplayer version of the game that would also support microtransactions, which NO casual games were doing yet.
I designed both a Cooperative and Competitive option to the multiplayer mode. Two players could play simultaneously online in the same restaurant, each one controlling their own waiter, either cooperating strategically to reach a goal, or competing with each other for tips. It was a blast!
I designed a "My Waiter" feature and interface that allowed players to customize the look of their waiter avatar, and even purchase clothing items from the Diner Dash store. Again, this was unheard of in casual games at the time.
In the store, players could even purchase entire new restaurants with new levels to play. These locations would get unlocked on a big scrollable map of Flo's hometown that I designed to be easily expandable.
While this lobby screen is obviously rough (remember, this was 2007, when casual games didn't do this sort of thing yet!), it shows how players could host a game in the restaurant of their choosing, in either cooperative or competitive mode. The multiplayer mode of the game was only available on PlayFirst's own website, as the other game portals didn't know how to handle this sort of thing.