Dave the Diver splashed into the Steam store for its official release on June 28th 2023 with overwhelming success. You take the wheel as the chubby but loveable Dave, who continually gets coerced by his friends to take on diving missions in a mysterious undersea location called the Blue Hole. Dave the Diver is a hybrid mix of an RPG, adventure, tycoon, and resource management.
You begin the game with your friends Cobra and Bancho convincing you to help them on various missions while gathering fish and resources for Bancho’s newly opened sushi restaurant that is on the shoreline of the Blue Hole. At first you learn how to dive and manage your oxygen and depth, and as you progress through the story, you will get access to the iDiver app which will let you spend money to increase your stats.
Your dives will be short and uneventful when you first enter the Blue Hole, but the cool thing is every time you dive back in, the ecology and terrain changes. You can even encounter little quests in the water, such as two adorable dolphins who need help. The more you dive, the more money you make, and you can start upgrading your suit, harpoon, oxygen tank, and more with the iDiver app.
Dave can only dive twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon. At night you are up top helping Bancho in the sushi restaurant. It’s in need of repairs, and you can help with that by picking up wood and items in the Blue Hole, and by buying new items with money. The restaurant will become fully customizable, and you can change the decor, seats, pillars and so on. The same concept applies to new recipes. Everything within Dave the Diver unlocks as you progress the story, and most of these features will be utilized on Dave’s smartphone.
Once things are looking better, Bancho’s opens up, and your nights are spent running orders to customers. This is similar to games like Overcooked, and it’s definitely not my genre, so I didn’t enjoy this aspect of the game. The good news is that you can unlock waitstaff and kitchen help to ease the burden. As with diving, you will begin to get more and more recipes and find new ingredients in the Blue Hole that will let you enhance your dishes. The Cooksta app lets your customers review your food, and if you receive too many poor reviews the restaurant will suffer for it.
The diving is much more interesting than running the sushi bar thankfully, and once you start to get better gear and weapons (through another app for weapons upgrades) things start to get more fun. Managing your oxygen is certainly a balancing act that can get super hectic. Speeding up or getting hit by a sea creature or obstacle takes oxygen away, and while you can find both small and large canisters randomly scattered around, sometimes you just can’t make it. There are escape pods, but they require a long space bar press action to activate, and if you’re being attacked or low on oxygen you’re probably going to die. If you do die, you can only bring one item back to the surface with you, so trying to make decisions on whether something is worth it or not is vital.
It won’t take long at all before you encounter something that will be aggressive towards you. A lot of times your harpoon won’t do the trick, so you need to swap to your gun. Managing ammo and finding ammo crates can be tricky, much like everything else you need to make sure you know how much ammo you have before attempting to go face to face with a strong sea creature. Eventually, you acquire a quest that sets you off on a cool storyline to discover a long lost race of sea people, and you can try your luck against some fierce underwater bosses.
There is no shortage of whacky mini games and apps with fun things to do in Dave the Diver. Something I really enjoyed is the MarinCa app, which adds new fish and sea creatures you catch to a database that displays facts about them on cards. There is a fully developed storyline to follow, and over 200 kinds of sea creatures to discover and catch. Something else I absolutely loved are the cutscenes, especially when Bancho the sushi chef enhances something. As mentioned before, the dolphins you encounter are heartwarming and you genuinely feel good after assisting them and watching their little cutscenes.
Dave the Diver is a mix of so many different genres that there is something for everyone within. It’s simple enough, yet not too hard and can appeal to all ages. While there isn’t a lot of depth to the game, there is almost always something fun to do. With the exception of running the sushi bar, I enjoyed my time exploring the Blue Hole and all its mysteries.
Dave the Diver is currently on Steam for $19.99 and will release on Nintendo Switch in 2023, but a date has not yet been given.
Holly Hudspeth is a best-selling author living in Fort Worth, Texas. She has six published novels to date; The Skyy Huntington Series, which is an epic dark fantasy adventure, and One Small Detail, a stand-alone medieval fantasy. Holly also enjoys writing fan fiction based on her avatars from games such as EverQuest, Elder Scrolls Online, and World of Warcraft. Her first major purchase at the established age of nine was the NES, and she has been gaming ever since. She enjoys fantasy games, city builders, RPGs, MMOs, SMITE, and The Sims franchise. Most nights she is in SMITE with her husband and friends, or playing ESO. When she isn't gaming, she is probably either at Disney or planning her next trip there.
Dave the Diver is a whacky, 2D/3D game that mixes several genres to form a fun adventure with silly characters and never a shortage of things to do. Each trip into the mysterious Blue Hole is different, and you’ll have plenty of quests and upgrades to work on. Spend your days diving, and your nights running a sushi bar. If you are looking for a great balance of not too hard, not too easy, Dave the Diver is it. While some of the missions can get kind of hairy, managing your resources is what it’s all about. The story is fun, and I really enjoyed the MarinCa app that gives us facts about sea creatures we catch!
PROS
- Game builds up in difficulty over time
- Blue Hole scenery is really gorgeous
- MarinCa app with facts about real sea life
- Hilarious cutscenes
CONS
- Running the sushi bar
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