It’s always a bold statement for a reviewer to make but I think you’ll find little argument around the gaming web that Dave The Diver is a top-choice candidate for Game of the Year in 2023. This little gem came out of nowhere and is already earning a place in gamer’s hearts typically reserved for rare indie royalty the likes of Stardew Valley and Super Meat Boy.Â
It’s not uncommon these days to blend a few genres into one game to try to make something new but there is usually something lost in the process from one or both of the original modes. Dave The Diver manages to take a great action-adventure underwater game and cross it with a sushi restaurant sim while chocking it full of RPG style unlocks and upgrades and sidebar mini-games and yet the sum is greater than all of the parts, and nothing seems to get lost along the way. Without further ado, let’s see how many fishing puns I can make and let’s dive in!
The fish-and-potatoes of Dave The Diver are underwater exploration, capture and combat.  Your old pal Cobra invites you to go into business together to open a sushi restaurant on an ocean lagoon that is somehow populated with nearly every species of sea life. Your main role in the venture is to utilize your deep-sea diving and fishing expertise to capture fresh product for the restaurant every day.
Initially armed with a harpoon gun and some basic equipment, you begin exploring the 2D lagoon by scrolling your way around and can capture most of the sea life that you meet by aiming with your mouse or stick and poking a shot off with the harpoon to real them back in. Some larger fish need to be weakened with a few shots or a slash of your dagger before they can be captured but there is not much that fights back in first area and you are essentially gated by the depth your starting equipment can handle.
Each day (twice a day) you bring your catch up and earn money from it in the restaurant (more on that later) and your earning can be used to upgrade your equipment allowing you to haul more fish, stay down longer and dive deeper which in turn gives you access to rarer and bigger (MUCH BIGGER) fish. You will also find crates along the way that upgrade your harpoon and your weapons temporarily for that run, although finding guns create blueprints that can upgrade your starting weapon long term as well. The fights get more and more challenging and are an absolute joy!
At the end of each day, you return to Bancho’s, the sushi restaurant that is the namesake of the third partner in your little venture. Bancho is a stoic sushi master who quickly becomes the stuff of legends (and has the best cutscenes in the game), turning your catches into works of art and tasking you with rarer and more difficult species to bring back.
This is where the game turns into more of a management sim. Although Cobra and Bancho regularly make you aware that you are the third wheel in the restaurant, in reality, you basically run the show, hiring and training better and better staff, selecting the décor for the restaurant and setting the nightly menu. Your choices in the menu department are key to the amount of money you can make with the product you’ve brought back, as you unlock more complicated recipes and ingredients and try to set the right amount for the night’s demand to avoid wasted product.
Once you are set up for the night, you open the restaurant and the whole thing turns into a frantic mini-game of serving the customers that come in, pouring their tea and beer, cleaning up after them and keeping Bancho and his kitchen team stocked. Success equals profit!
It is frankly ridiculous how good Dave The Diver is. On paper, the idea sounds like it could be a great niche game for a very specific crowd that might amount to a few hours of entertainment. In reality, the art, the music, the style, the concept and the characters come together into a wonderful blend that nearly everyone will find wildly entertaining (as evidenced by its 97% Overwhelmingly Positive Steam score with 41k votes and 89 Metacritic Score at the time of this publication). Its depth is astonishing as well, with a wealth of side quests and mini-games that take nothing away from the main fun and only add to the well-roundedness of the experience. I am currently 30 hours in, and I feel like I’ve only begun to swim the surface. If you do yourself one solid this gaming season, try testing some new waters and bag yourself the tastiest catch of the year with Dave The Diver! (ok ok I’m done with the fishing puns 🙂
