Dave the Diver is an aquatic adventure RPG that’s wholesome, wonderfully complex, and delightfully hard to put down. You play as Dave, a spearfisher who runs a sushi restaurant by night and gets swept up in adventure in his free time. The game is developed by Mintrocket.
The game has two main parts: spearfishing and restaurant management. In the morning and afternoon, you spend your time spearfishing in a colorful patch of ocean, minding your oxygen supply, impaling fish with a harpoon and reeling them in, and collecting crafting resources and other ingredients like seaweed from the reef. The diving is a delight, mostly a chill and soothing experience with colorful fish darting here and there and kelp gently swaying in the ocean currents—though that relaxing vibe can abruptly turn into a frenzied panic as a sawtooth shark tries to cut you in half or a pelican eel tries to swallow you whole before you escape to surface with your precious haul.
In the evening you put together a menu for your inscrutable sushi chef, Bancho, who makes the meals while you serve a parade of customers in a frantic Diner Dash-style minigame. You can use your earnings to redecorate the restaurant and upgrade your diving gear, and as your restaurant grows more popular on social media you can have Bancho research new recipes, which will require new ingredients, which gives you new goals for the next day’s dives.
Nearly every time I sat down to play Dave the Diver it threw a new feature or activity at me. Night fishing opens up the pursuit of new species and turns the once comforting ocean spooky, and new gear like tranquilizers and submersibles give you new ways to catch fish. A staff management system for the restaurant lets you hire and train workers to help out, increasing the amount of customers you can serve and the speed at which you can serve them.
Dave the Diver is not particularly challenging but it is an ever-expanding Jenga tower of mechanics and task management that somehow never falls over. Each new character, over-the-top cutscene, and minigame feels like it should topple the whole premise but it just never happens. It is an ever-expanding Jenga tower of mechanics that somehow never falls over.
In conclusion, Dave the Diver is an impressive management sim dream that’s packed with activities and full of heart. It’s charmingly complex yet delightfully hard to put down. The game offers two main parts: spearfishing and restaurant management. The diving is mostly a chill experience with colorful fish darting here and there while night fishing opens up new species pursuit that turns once comforting ocean spooky. The game has an ever-expanding Jenga tower of mechanics that somehow never falls over.
PREVIEW : Shattered Heaven (PC)
