Sometimes a game will sneak up on the Indie gaming scene and take it by storm. Vampire Survivors was the last one back in 2022, but recently Dave the Diver has been all over my social media feeds and my Steam front page. Dave the Diver is a nice sort of surprise that came out of nowhere, though it does have some issues.

You play as the titular Dave, who is called from vacation and roped into a new business venture. At first, it seems simple. By day, Dave is tasked with diving into the mysterious underwater zone known as the “Big Blue Hole”, catching fish for a new sushi restaurant. By night, he must manage the sushi bar, making sure customers are taken care of to raise Bancho Sushi’s rankings on “Cooksta” a social media app for food.

Dave’s seemingly simple job leads to a larger one though involving an undersea civilization and all sorts of other mysteries. Essentially, Dave the Diver is best described as a casual adventure game with Roguelite elements, mixed with a management sim. My best comparison would be the first two Steamworld Dig games mixed with a management sim, though it does get a little more complex.

Dave the Diver is a complex game from start to finish. You can dive twice a day, in the morning and the afternoon. Your dives don’t have a time limit though, so it only transitions to the next time of day once you surface. However, your Oxygen level serves as your health. Because of this, you have to make sure that you aren’t taking damage from hostile fish, and that you resurface either on your own or via escape pods found underwater before you run out of air.

You also have a limited capacity of things to carry, so if you are overburdened you’ll move slower and take longer to resurface. Escape pods will help you surface instantly, but they take a short time to trigger, so dangerous fish may need to be dispatched. This leads to the fishing mechanics. You can either use a melee weapon to attack slower fish (you start with a knife), or you can use a harpoon gun to reel them in. You also get a ballistic weapon early on which is necessary for taking on hostile fish, but that violence comes at a cost.

If you can repeatedly damage a fish with a harpoon gun, you’ll get a 2-star fish that is of a higher quality than the 1-star you’ll get from shooting them with a ballistic weapon. At the same time, eventually, you’ll be able to unlock (and craft) non-lethal weapons, and apprehending fish in a pacifist manner will give the highest quality produce at 3-star. The interesting thing about this is that every time you dive, the layout of the “Big Blue Hole” changes.

This means that you’ll constantly be looking for new materials/produce, finding underwater lockers/chests with condiments and other items, as well as boxes with weapons in them. If you collect a weapon enough times, you’ll be able to craft it for yourself permanently. Also, you’ll be turning your produce into dishes and using the money to enhance your diving equipment, but that’s not all.

You’ll also hire staff, which means you’ll have to pay them, train them, and utilize them effectively. Additionally, you’ll want to balance how much money you spend on the Sushi Bar, including interior decorations (which are mostly cosmetic), and how much you spend on diving equipment.

Here’s where things get a little sour. Different harpoon attachments and upgrades have different QTE events to reel in fish. The standard one is a button-mash prompt, but others include spinning the joystick or wiggling it back and forth (on a gamepad). There are no accessibility options (at this time) to adjust or remove these QTEs. There are also QTEs when serving food, namely pouring beverages or refilling the wasabi. However, the bar’s QTEs are much easier to manage.

Overall, Dave the Diver’s options are fairly sparse. However, the developers have already revealed that an upcoming update this month will be providing a toggle for QTEs so that they can be held rather than mashing the button. It doesn’t quite fix some of the other ones, but it does address a major accessibility problem. The developers have addressed other issues as well, and are listening to the community feedback, so check out the video below for more details on that.

There is a lot of content in Dave the Diver that I haven’t touched on because part of the fun is the discovery of it. However, a wealth of love and attention has gone into every part of the game. Everything from the visual style, the music, and the various gameplay mechanics all have a staggering amount of love and care interwoven into them.

The developers clearly have a love of anime, since there are fully animated pixel cutscenes in certain anime styles that are shown at various points when Bancho is making sushi, or when you are crafting weapons or other items. Additionally, the gameplay blends the pixel graphic style with a gorgeous underwater 2.5D aesthetic as well. Dave the Diver is a feast for the senses, and I am always proud to see indie studios creating games that are clearly passion projects.

I really love Dave the Diver. I think the developers have created a truly special experience that really captures a special magic that some games just never achieve. While it does have some issues (namely with the lack of accessibility), seeing the developers trying to resolve some of these problems and make clear changes really makes me optimistic for the game’s future. It also seems like the developers have big plans too, so hopefully, we’ll see more adventures for Dave in the future. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sushi bar to run.

A PC review copy of Dave the Diver was provided by Mintrocket for this review.

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Dave the Diver

$19.99 USD

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Beautiful Visuals
• Fun Management Gameplay
• Engaging Exploration
• Lots of Content and Progression
• Intriguing Story

Cons

• The QTE's are Inaccessible for Some People