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

Dave The Diver is a 2d side scrolling adventure rogue lite game where you play as a diver trying to catch fish for a sushi restaurant while solving clues about the local geography and helping out many individuals along the way. For most of the game, you can do two dives per day to catch as many fish, materials, or solve missions underwater before going back to your boat. After two dives, it's night time where you then go to work at the sushi restaurant. You choose the staff to hire, what items will be on the menu, decorate the place, then help your staff fulfilling orders. The gameplay loop is simple, addicting, and slowly expands introducing new elements as you continue playing. I won't dive much further there to avoid any spoilers. There are a LOT of upgrades in this game, from training your staff, increasing your dive distance, upgrading weapons to use in dives. It's almost overwhelming how many different things you can (and most, should) upgrade. It does a decent job of hinting which direction you should upgrade at least early on though. Some other aspects of the game are not explained well, or at all, and I only found out about them when trying to rush through to clean up the last few achievements. The game does a decent job at introducing new elements when it begins to get stale, but it doesn't quite introduce enough to break up the monotony. Overall though it's a fun and charming game that should absolutely be picked up when on sale!