Flo returns to DinerTown after starring in the Cooking Dash show, and is horrified to find that Mr. Big and his goons has stirred up trouble and ruined the town while she is away. With the help of old and new friends, Flo is determined to foil BigCorp's schemes and return the town to their former glory.
Unlike the previous Diner Dash entries, Adventures has a greater emphasis on story and events. Instead of being served cutscenes at the beginning and end of every chapter, the player needs to unlock new plot progressions by spending the stars they earn from completing in-game levels.
Despite its name, Diner Dash Adventures also contains elements of Hotel Dash, where Flo must also help revitalize an Inn and a Cruise Ship in addition to the restaurants.
This game provides examples of:
- Ad Reward: Pop-ups to watch ads usually appear after closing the shop (for bonus cash), losing a level (to gain either 1 diamond or bonus food supplies), or ending a Food Truck round (to extend the round by 30 seconds).
- All-Loving Hero: Flo is always ready to help people in trouble and do a good deed for others, even her adversaries. In one event, she goes out of the way to decorate the town to make Beatrix happy, even though the latter frequently tries to sabotage her. Later, Fairly lampshades how kind Flo is and how much her presence brings happiness to others.
- Alliterative Name: Given to a lot of the animal characters: Stinkerbelle the skunk, Princess the pig, Al Paca the alpaca, Dinah the dino, and Purdy the peacock.
- Alliterative Family: The members of Flo's family all start with F. We have Flo herself, her grandma Florence, and her Mysterious Parents Fred and Fairly.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Queenie's dad is never mentioned, although her mom plays an important role in Chapters 4-8.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Zigzagged. Spending gems and/or keys to open the Event pinatas may give Flo some unique themed outfits and accessories that has no other purpose beyond aesthetics. The Collection pinatas, on the other hand, gives outfits for Flo's customers, and serving them while they are wearing the appropriate outfit will give the player bonus event tickets, which itself could be used to unlock decorations and rewards. However, this bonus become meaningless after the particular event is over, or if the player have collected all the available rewards.
- And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Enforced. A lot of the game's mission involve building town structures and decorations, which the player can unlock by spending stars, which themselves are earned from completing the game levels. Certain events also allow the player to unlock special decorations.
- Arboreal Abode: The game's seventh location, the Treehouse Teahouse, is a hotel made of a hollowed out giant tree.
- Art Shift: This game has a completely different artstyle than in the older games.
- Big Eater: Minnie always orders food twice, while Gordon has a special "hunger bar" and the player needs to keep feeding him until it is full (the more expensive the food is, the faster the bar will fill). During Fairly's potluck party, Gordon, Minnie and Mr. Big compete in a pie-eating contest after someone brought too much pies. Minnie won.
- Bland-Name Product: Queenie is obsessed with Selfiegram, which is presumably the DinerTown equivalent of Instagram.
- But Thou Must!: Once the player completes the first chapter, they are forced to create a game account and cannot back out of it.
- Card-Carrying Villain: BigCorp is a self-proclaimed evil corporation, and all of the members identify as villains who take delight in bringing mayhem and destruction to the town.
- Clueless Detective: Bernie is portrayed as a less-than-competent detective in Diner Dash Adventures, as he constantly miss out on clues and forgets about his cases.
- Color-Coded Characters: Unlike the previous titles, where every customer can come in any variety of colours, Diner Dash Adventures assigns each customer with a specific colour scheme, each associated with a particular trait.
- Green (Generous): Rosie, Minnie, Gordon, Bernie, Quinn.
- Red (Fast): Barb, Shakes, Gil, Max and Piper.
- Blue (Patient): Kingston, Queenie, Norbert, Dorbert, Grandma Florence, Cookie.
- Connected All Along: Flo's mom is apparently a distant cousin to Mr. Big, meaning that Flo is actually related to the Big family.
- Couple Theme Naming: Kingston and Queenie, are actually referred to as the game's OTP. Their proposal and wedding preparation takes up a lot of the story, and Quinn (from Wedding Dash) lampshades this by saying that she wants to give the best wedding photoshoot for her "king and queen".
- December–December Romance: Grandma Florence and Grandpa Norbert starts courting in chapter 16.
- Disappeared Dad: A newer sidequest revolves around Flo trying to find out what happened to her dad.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Most DinerTown residents, especially the younger ones like Cookie and Max, refer to Fairly as simply "Flo's mom".
- Fountain of Youth: Vera is reverted to baby age when an experiment goes wrong towards the end of Chapter 35.
- Freemium Timer: Unlike the previous entries of the series, Adventures requires Flo to use up 10 "supplies" to play a stage. It takes 2 minutes to get 1 supply, and the amount you can get is capped at 50. Trying to play a stage with an insufficient amount supplies would prompt a pop-up to purchase a refill.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Norbert has a twin brother named Dorbert. They both look exactly alike, except that Dorbert wears T-Shirt and overalls and has white/grey hair, while Norbert wears a suit and has black hair.
- Implied Love Interest: In one of the Valentine Event quiz, the player can watch a short video clip and guess the name of the couple written on the Sweetie Graffiti hidden in the background. Among the options are Kingston and Queenie and Grandma Florence and Norbert—who are shown to be actual couples in the game. The other options are Flo and Cookie, Rose and Max, and Minnie and Shakes—who are not shown to be a couple.
- Ironic Name: Max is The Big Guy but eats very little, while Minnie is small but has the bigger stomach and always orders twice.
- Meaningful Rename: Skillet is renamed "Leverage" when in Beatrix's care.
- Minion with an F in Evil: Flip, a BigCorp intern, is really a childish, excitable, and actually rather sweet animal lover. Flo and Grandma Florence have no problem leaving their dog, Skillet, in his care, despite usually avoiding BigCorp and their goons altogether, and Queenie actually considers him a friend.
- Missing Mom: The "Change Of Hart" sidequest features Flo following clues to find out what happened to her mom.
- More Deadly Than the Male: In the BigCorp, Beatrix and Vera Big are depicted as more evil and dangerous than the likes of Flip, Devon and Mr. Big himself, who are more self-absorbed and clueless than outright malicious.
- Mysterious Parent: Flo's parents have been missing for 30 years, and Grandma Florence is reluctant to tell her what happened to them. Flo has to complete a series of puzzles her parents left behind to find out what happened to them.
- Mystery Episode: The dark forest portion of the game features Flo and Flip on the quest to find out who assumed the identity of "Little Baby Mustache".
- Narcissist: Devon Aire, one of Mr. Big's goons, is in love with himself and spends a lot of time admiring himself in the mirror.
- Opposites Theme Naming: Minnie has a brother named Max. Ironically, Max, despite being a buff guy who needs a two-person seater, usually orders very little food, while Minnie, despite her small size, is the bigger eater of the two and always orders twice.
- Premium Currency: Both gold and diamonds are required to buy food/equipment/customer upgrades, but while gold can be earned by playing the levels, diamonds can only be earned from certain daily/event quest rewards, or bought (either with gold, or real money) from the store.
- Sdrawkcab Alias: Flo introduces herself to Mr. Big as "Olf" when she needed to infiltrate into his company during the "License To Kill" Event.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: When there's one customer left or down to the last 30 seconds in a timed level, the music changes to a more "hurry up" variation to alert the player.
- Theme Twin Naming: Twin brothers Norbert and Dorbert.
- The Unmasking "The Fox" is revealed to be Flo's Dad Fred in disguise; he faked his own death to escape his mistakes.
- Variable Mix: The restaurants' in-game tracks gain more instrumentation each time you complete a level goal.
- Verbal Tic: Queenie ends most of her sentences with hashtags. #descriptions
- Women Are Wiser: A lot of the male characters are described as lacking in IQ and/or common sense. Max, Cookie, and Flip are sweet but dimwitted; Gil is a wannabe pirate; Mr. Big is the very definition of Stupid Evil; Devon is a narcissist; while Shakes is a caffeine junkie who is prone to get into conspiracy theories despite his intelligence. By comparison, their female companions are a lot more down-to-earth.
- You Don't Look Like You: Mostly due the change in artstyle, a lot of characters have noticeably different designs than in previous Diner Dash games. This is especially noticeable with Cookie and Flo.
