3.5/5 ★ – bokonon764's review of Dave the Diver.

I’ve been hearing about this game for awhile and finally decided to give it a try. Dave the Diver is an indie game from devs and publishers Mint Rocket. I don’t really know what to call the genre, in the best way possible. You dive in a reef like environment to gather ingredients for a sushi restaurant. It’s super fun. You play as Dave who is a diver. I like Dave, he’s sort of a hapless, nice guy trope. He wears a fedora and Hawaiian shirt when working at Bancho, the sushi restaurant he helps run. There’s a story involving merpeople, chef drama, and other stuff, it’s not terribly interesting. It’s also just not what I need from the game, and when there’s long all-text dialogue segments, I pretty much just mash the A button until it’s over. One of the few downsides to this game is how many unnecessary story beats there are. Maybe that’s more of a personal opinion, but I really didn’t need any of the story sections in this game. The core loop of this game is cool, because it’s a two part loop, and one part never feels more important than the other, at least it didn’t for me. Progress in one means progress in the other; you fish/explore for sushi ingredients, you serve said ingredients for money, then use the money to get better diving equipment, to get better ingredients, to make more money, to get better diving equipment, so on and so forth, til the end of fucking time. There is a definite ending, but players are encouraged to keep going once the ending is reached. There were a few moments while I was playing Dave the Diver where I felt overwhelmed by the amount of systems. Some of the said systems felt designed in a way that was hard to understand. For instance: there is a rogue-like element to the fishing part of the game, you find weapon modifiers that only last til the end of that run or until you find another modifier. But then you can also upgrade the weapons before starting runs, it’s confusing because I could never tell if purchasing and crafting upgrades was actually doing anything. There are a few too many idle systems as well. Dispatching staff, two separate farms, a fish farm, (which I never really understood) a second sushi restaurant to manage…it’s a bit much. But once you get the swing of everything, it has that idle mobile game excitement when you collect resources, “oh yeah! My onions should be done!”, type shit. The spear gun mechanics take a minute to get used to and feel great once you have the hang of them. With different types of spear gun, you have to complete quick time events to reel fish in. There’s also different types of guns to use: there’s a rifle, a tranq gun, a sniper rifle, even a grenade launcher. I stuck to the main underwater rifle for most of the game, using the tranquilizer variation late game. A word of advice, invest in the tranquilizer weapons and net gun; it’s how you catch 3 star fish. Dave the Diver has that Nintendo game magic despite being a third party Switch game from MINTROCKET. Characters talk in gibberish with text boxes, akin to Animal Crossing and the like; the characters are goofy, and even when it’s serious, the levity is still palpable. As I said before, I really just didn’t need the story in this game, but it’s there if you want it, I guess. Dave the Diver was full of high points and some low points; in hindsight, it’s great, but while playing, I had my frustrations. Overall, it’s definitely worth a try if you’re a fan of quirky indie titles. Definitely a game someone that owns a Switch would be into. It’s a great “play a little bit every day” kind of game. I never got obsessed or thought about when I wasn’t playing, just a nice escape every few nights or so. Really fun game.