I wasn’t sure about Dave the Diver. The whole concept of diving into an ocean, spear-fishing animals, and then taking them back to cook at a sushi restaurant was sus at best. It seemed complicated on paper and initially felt like maybe the game was juggling too many genres at once. I mean, how in the world could a game do so many things so well without skimming in some gameplay design? There is no way this could be a balanced and competent experience, right? RIGHT?
Well, you know what assuming does.
Dave the Diver is an oddly satisfying and balanced game that brings the best of everything it’s trying to do. It’s a game I can see myself coming back to repeatedly for the mix-mash of different genres all working together in perfect harmony. Right now, it’s on the shelf with Binding of Isaac, a game that I can take a break from for years and still return to and enjoy as if I had just discovered its wonderment. It has been a long time since I’ve been this emotionally satisfied with a game experience that wasn’t driven by a multi-million-dollar AAA game from a monster publisher.
But here we are with Dave the Diver.
Let’s dive right into this.
Satisfying in nearly every way
Dave the Diver is a game that is simplified in its cross-genre structure. The first half of the game is simply diving and collecting. The second half of the game is restaurant management. Somewhere in between both and connecting it all is an RPG backbone. All three of these pieces and parts strangely work together thanks to the efforts of Mint Rocket in making this wacky diving game into a meaningful experience that will have you coming back for more.
The diving and collecting
What drives this game is Dave’s diving, which introduces an action-like 2D world. Dave swims around and spears fish of various types collects hidden treasures, and is offered side quests to accomplish under the sea by those looking for help. This portion of the game is fun, as you get to hunt, spear, and collect fish that are interesting, all the while juggling side quests that make it more than just a fishing simulator. All portions of this diving experience help to push the rest of the game forward. As stated previously, it’s part of the balanced gameplay.
What I found interesting about this specific portion of the game is how deep the diving maps were and the variety of fish those spaces offer. I’m not sure I’ve been this engrossed in exploring a 2D world since the days of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The maps in Dave the Diver go far into the abyss, where you’re encouraged to catch fish to keep exploring. The game divides the rarity of the fish with the depth of the space, so the further you go down into the depths, the more interesting and different fish there are to capture. You can also find a bevy of different items along the way such as better weaponry and mysterious ingredients, which adds to the next portion of gameplay. Encouraging the player to keep going and giving them reason to keep exploring is a wonderful design, especially when it’s cleverly done – as is the case with Dave the Diver. The different fish certainly stoke a curious flame that needs to find the ‘next best fish’.
Before we get to that next part of the game, the gameplay mechanics for this segment of the overall gameplay are easy to pick up on as it is entertaining to play. Fishing works like this — you aim, shoot, and pull in fish. As simple as those sound, there are some hiccups to the process depending on what fish you’re trying to haul in. In the early stages of the game, you could struggle to pull in fish or you can outright not have the capabilities to capture them. This harkens back to the RPG backbone, where you push forward with accomplishing side quests to upgrade Dave’s equipment to do more. The more you do in the game, the easier it is to acquire more complicated and powerful fish. It’s a lovely combination of doing A-B-C, then you can do D-E-F. It’s an encouragement of sorts that continually progresses Dave and pushes the gamer to do more.
Now, as cut and dry as that might seem, there is an in-between state for the mechanics, where you can’t just pull the fish in, but you can still capture them after multiple capture attempts. There are times when you will hook a fish, it will get away, then you hook it again and the gameplay changes into a simple button-mashing or controller-twirling command that determines if you capture said fishy. This does two things to the gameplay and the expectations that come with it. It tells the player that there are some fish that you can capture with some QTE effort attached to the process, while also whispering to them that they should keep exploring to determine what fish fall into this category. Ultimately, it keeps the gameplay fresh and less predictable, which is great for a game that is driven by exploration and discovery. I could have easily seen Mint Rocket going a much simpler route of either capturing a fish or not, but by them putting in this ambiguous in-between phase of fish catching, it plays into the player’s need to keep exploring and testing the waters. I like that quite a bit for a game like this.
Sushi restaurant management
Once Dave has captured fish, there is only one thing to do with them – chop them up and serve them to customers! Don’t worry, Dave isn’t the chef, he’s just the lead server. The actual chef is an over-dramatic character that goes into full over-dramatic animated anime-esque cutscenes that add to the ambiance of the Bancho Sushi restaurant. It’s cool, hip-happening, and it needs some unnecessary blunt drama to make it more interesting. Believe me, it gets a good dose of the latter.
The crux of this gameplay has Dave serving customers and meeting their demands in short stints. Dave goes fishing during the day, then delivers the goods at night for distribution. It’s a tale of two gameplay halves, but balanced and welcomed.
Anyway, this area of gameplay is something akin to Spongebob Squarepants Krusty-Krab Cookoff where you’re trying to satisfy customers with the right order and doing it in an ample amount of time. The gameplay could feature Dave pouring green tea perfectly for a customer, running back and forth delivering sushi dishes, and/or cleaning up after guests. Occasionally, this portion of the game will ask Dave to drum up a special dish from his fishing expeditions that aren’t regularly on the menu, which plays back into the diving part of the game perfectly. For example, the first big mission you are given is to make shark-head soup. Of course, that requires two items – a shark’s head and olive oil. Both are readily available somewhere in the ocean, which plays back to the diving and exploration portion of the game. Once acquired, you deliver the dish to Bancho’s and open another phase of complication for the restaurant.
Anyway, the restaurant part of the experience in Dave the Diver is equally as deep as the ocean that Dave explores. You must balance out satisfying customers, getting good food to them on time and in order of request, and you must create good recipes that bring up the restaurant’s revenue. To make it more complicated, the game also allows you to research new foods, enhance current food served, and hire workers to help Dave out as Bancho’s becomes more popular and significantly crowded. There is so much going on here that it could have been a separate game, or maybe even in a DLC, but it’s all built into one place. It’s wild how wonderful a variety this game brings to the gameplay department. You get a good portion of everything you want from Dave the Diver.
Those RPG elements
The complicated backbone that connects the two above gameplay parts is how the upgrade system works. You must earn more coin to upgrade more equipment for Dave. Upgrading the equipment opens opportunities and allows Dave to do more, such as swimming deeper, spear fishing bigger fish, and/or allowing him to stay longer underwater. All that is driven by a cell phone that allows our hero to instantly take on quests, communicate with people, and upgrade equipment.
Of course, you must gain coins to do any of the above, as it’s not just XP that pushes the envelope for Dave. To earn coins, you take on odd side quests. These side quests might include locating a rare set of shells, collecting starfish, pushing out evasive fish from the area, or maybe discovering an underwater civilization that is trapped by a giant squid. That last one is fun. PProgressing or completing these side quests opens new opportunities and upgrades in Dave’s life. Those upgrades directly affect Bancho’s business and helps stretch the gameplay out even further. It’s nutso how big and deep Dave’s diving adventures are in this game. Not to mention how complicated it can all get as you progress. You have so many reasons above and below the water to keep playing this game and it’s all thanks to a very well-thought-through RPG backbone.
A petty complaint
With all this wonderment above, is there a fault in this game’s stars? For me, there was just a minor petty complaint along the way. For whatever reason, I could not get the firing controls down perfectly. When Dave was ready to launch a spear at a fish, I had to hold down the A button, adjust the shot alignment, and then fire the spear with R2 on the controller. In a panic, doing all three steps is nearly an impossibility. Why would I panic? It’s no fun when a sawfish or a shark decides it’s go-time and starts pummeling you underwater. Those hits take away valuable oxygen from Dave, which, if too deep, can result in Dave losing consciousness. Once he does that, he must choose one item to keep from his exploration while he loses the rest.
That panic push is irritating and having to go through so many steps to defend Dave in the game is rough. The hours I put into the game had me spend a good chunk panic-pushing. Granted, I don’t think this is the game’s problem as much as it’s mine, but still, it was present. I’m glad the game doesn’t just kill Dave, though, which wouldn’t follow along with the personality of the experience, but it hurts losing a lot of loot you might have been collecting during underwater adventuring. Again, this is more about my skill than the game, but it’s present in this review experience.
Admittingly, I think the above is a challenge the game gives you when you dive. Trying to figure out if you should come up to the surface safely at some point to deliver your fish and goods in preparation for Bancho or press the exploration and keep searching for new and cool things is quite the conundrum. That’s a gamer’s decision and it adds to the overall challenge of the exploration. Still, I hate panic-pushing. *sigh*It’s a me thing.
All this said, my hot air is getting low, so let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Dave the Diver from Mint Rocket is something to behold. The game features exploration, collection, side quests, an RPG backbone, and a restaurant simulator, all of which are beautifully balanced and connected. This is by far one of the better games of 2023 and shouldn’t be overlooked.
