Dave the Diver
Game Title: Dave the Diver
Released: June 28, 2023
Game Length: 46 Hours
Grade: A
Expectations
Going Blind: About a year ago, there were rumors of a cute little game hitting early access. I saw the title Dave the Diver come across my feed many times since then. I even remember watching glimpses of the trailer when it was still early in development. I didn't think much about it until it was surprisingly released only a mere year later. Then again, that's how long it took to develop some other great games. Considering that the Steam reviews were all very pleasant and the cost of the game was set for $20 retail, I thought that it would be worth a playthrough. So around August, I decided to add it to a list of games to try out.
Taking a Break: Initially, my opinion of the game was pretty shallow. After playing for only a few hours, I didn't think the game was worth the reviews. It wasn't like I wanted to give up playing the game but I certainly needed to step away from it for a short period of time. I decided to turn my attention to other games in the meantime. I tried the demo of Chants of Sennaar but felt there wasn't enough substance or focus in deciphering the languages in the game. As you could tell from my reviews, I got hooked on Moonstone Island when it released and decided to finish Trine 5. Then in the beginning of October, I decided to dive right back into the game. I had no idea how much depth the game had as my predicted ten hours to see everything expanded much deeper than anticipated.
Gameplay
The Whirlpool: There are two main aspects of the game that are essential to the gameplay loop. The first part is rather simple: gather fish. All you have to do is dive into the water and use your tools to catch them. Your oxygen tank determines how long you can stay underwater. Getting hurt or moving faster underwater will expend some of your air. You will lose everything that was gathered if that runs out. Otherwise, there is no time limit. You will slow down once you reach your weight limit but are given a little bit of leeway until you can't carry anymore. You can access your inventory and drop things if you wish to continue. The day is divided between morning, afternoon, and evening sessions. For the most part, the landscape and type of fish do not change between them. Evening is treated as a "fish bowl" event as you cannot go beyond the shallow waters, exclusive features like nocturnal fish are made available, and it cuts a third of your time at the restaurant.
The Restaurant: When you reach the evening portion of the game, there will be an opportunity to cook some meals with the fish thrown into cold storage. While there isn't a limit on the number of meals the chef prepares, any that are not served to customers are thrown out. There is a limit on how many different types of meals you can prepare. Ingredients can be sold individually and you can hire staff members to help with cooking, cleaning, serving, or being dispatched to retrieve more goods. While the main character can assist in delivering meals, serving drinks, preparing wasabi for the chefs, or cleaning tables, the staff members are more than nimble enough to cover those chores much quicker than you (if properly trained for those activities). You can enhance the meals permanently by preparing a number of meals that don't get used for customers. There is hardly any value in making anything lower than the powerhouses that generate the highest profit, even if it is something you never made before. The only time you should worry about the taste value is to increase your restaurant's rank but that only changes if you sell a dish with a higher value than what you are currently at.
Mechanics
Features: At this point, you might be wondering how someone could spend hours gathering fish and selling them to customers without ever growing bored. Let's just say that there are hundreds of things that happen along the way that will continuously surprise you. There are seven chapters with their own list of mini-games, characters, and systems that become available. You'll unlock more tools like the butterfly net to collect the tiniest creatures, special gloves to gather urchins or to drop rocks on the clever beasts hiding in the seafloor, and various weapons to bring down the bigger fish. At one point, you'll begin harvesting crops from farms both above and below the sea level. Eventually, it becomes possible to "shoot fish in a barrel" by developing eggs and reproducing your own personal fish supply.
Smartphone: The apps on your phone will unlock as you progress through each of these features in the game. The weapon shop enables you to craft and enhance weapons with a list of elemental properties as you obtain the proper materials through each dive. The most expensive and essential requests come from upgrading your scuba gear to dive deeper, deal more damage, last longer, and eventually obtaining the ability of using your knife to mine resources without needing a pickaxe. Fun pictures of what people eat and the types of fish you encounter are stored on a social media site, collectable cards, and a couple of photo albums. Missions to scoop up miscellaneous objects or hunt down dangerous fish will net you interesting charms that add little bonuses to your adventure. Daily records of your farm and restaurant activity are stored for your convenience. There are numerous other accessible features like checking the weather, calling people (it is a phone after all), quest log, mail that informs you of upcoming party events, calendar, and calculator. You can listen to all the wonderful music or spend your days hatching a long list of digital fish on your GYAO device (as a homage to Tamagotchi).
Weapons: Your shut-in pal is at your disposal when it comes to crafting and upgrading your weapons. Blueprints must first be accumulated through obtaining the equipment multiple times from the sunken weapon caches. Material from the depths will be needed to forge one your own firearms that can be equipped before you dive. Those not equipped that have elemental properties will start appearing in crates down below. The harpoon is your other trusty tool that comes in handy when you run out of ammunition. Despite it having a short range, it does wonders hooking onto different types of fish. If the amount of damage you deal is almost enough to snag your prey, a small mini-game will commence. The elemental type determines what you need to do: standard and fire are button-mashers, poison requires turning the analog stick, and electric has timed sequences.
Events: In addition to creating new dishes to serve VIP members and party members, there is a large number of extraordinary out-of-place moments that alleviates the repetitive dive and retrieve gameplay. Despite how over the top the cutscenes are already, you'll probably still be surprised when things suddenly shift into a first-person adventure game, a stealth game, or a rhythm game. A second site eventually becomes available with its own number of mini-games, including seahorse racing. Boss fights occur quite frequently with their individual style of combat. Chase sequences and puzzle rooms become more abundant in the later chapters while exploring the various underground ruins. The good news is these interludes can be restarted if you fail. There is occasionally an added option to return to the boat if you feel your current status isn't enough for the challenge at hand. Once you complete an event, you'll always be given enough oxygen to progress to a checkpoint even if that one last hit lowered your supply down to a couple points.
Style
Pacing: For some people, being able to efficiently gather a large supply of goods in each dive might be somewhat overwhelming. This can cause an overflow of ingredients too much for your sushi restaurant to serve customers every night. Instead, it is important to focus on the main story when possible. There will be plenty of opportunities to maximize your profits when you unlock more alternative gameplay opportunities and open additional regions. Move the story too fast and multiple events will occur after every dive. There are special events that will skip the evening session and therefore postpone anything that was scheduled to happen at the restaurant.
Cutscenes: As mentioned above, there are a series of cutscenes that play out every time you craft a weapon, upgrade a weapon, enhance a meal, or research new dishes. There are about four different types of cutscenes that can play out but they only occur once after the first time you enact something during a session. They are short and enjoyable enough to watch every time they play but there is a skip feature available once they become too monotonous.
Patches: Although the game reached a point of completion with its release, there were still room for improvement. There were a number of patches to help smooth over some rough spots. Within the last four months, there were around 20 hotfixes to mitigate the obscure crash and progressional problems. I personally saw about ten of these subtle issues myself between being hounded by an overaggressive shark to an objective not completing in the final chapter. The developers have been in contact on their Youtube channel when a major patch is supposed to be released. The first update modifies button mashing in a way to keep from waking up their spouse in the middle of the night or sell all two-star fish at your farm. In addition to the release of the game to the Nintendo Switch on October 26th, they fleshed out new missions in the final areas and added crabs & lobsters. As some added fun, you can check out their April Fools update of adding a 3D Mode.
Review
Summary: Whether a person will enjoy playing this game is ultimately determined on how much they enjoy diving for fish and selling them at the restaurant. The characters and settings are over-the-top as you encounter the occasional breaks between gameplay sessions. The amount of content is overwhelming when you discover and unlock something new almost everyday. While there are intense moments when being chased by something bigger than you, the environment and pixel art is charming enough to keep encounters from being terrifyingly scary. There are a number of safeguards that offer players second chances during unique events and various opportunities to improve aspects that might be lacking. It is possible to spend an hour underwater in a single dive session or skip forward to the evening when customers visit your restaurant if your food supply is full to the gills. I definitely recommend this game.