DAVE THE DIVER Early Access Review

I first played this game in Next Fest, which immediately hooked me. Luckily, this one lived up to and even surpassed all my expectations of what a casual action-adventure exploration game mash-up of diving and sushi restaurant management could achieve.

Dave is a catch-all character, your everyday obese diver who does what’s needed to complete the job, even when it makes him scared for his safety. There are several other characters, such as Dave’s dodgy, arms-dealing boss and the sushi chef, Bancho. All characters that pop in to make appearances are fun to interact with, and each has a distinct personality and reasons for speaking to you.

There is a main story running alongside all the smaller threads. It would be a spoiler to reveal too much, but it is engaging and balances environmental concerns with light-hearted fun. Plus, it involves a behemoth giant squid, so what’s not to like?

Underwater Fishy Slaughter

The world of Dave The Diver is brightly coloured, light-hearted, and fun. It balances ecological concerns with silliness cleverly and always feels dynamic and fresh as it throws new stories, characters, and game dynamics at you.

Humour is well pitched, though the dialogue is sometimes a little too far into the realm of caricatures, making it tolerably cheesy but one of the game’s weaker aspects. On the other hand, many different creatures populate the world. The player can discover and interact with playful dolphins, pirates, and merpeople. All these different characters give the world a dynamic, lived-in, exciting feel that motivates you to explore further and deeper.

Pixel paradise – dive by night, serve by day

The appearance of Dave The Diver is bright, cheery, and the perfect game for the pixel style, with the atmosphere and humour blending perfectly with the cute, appealing visuals.

The gameplay is divided between diving in the pool and serving the fish, you caught in the sushi restaurant to impatient guests.

The underwater sections of the game have a perfect balance of relaxation and challenge. There is also a good learning curve, so it’s never so easy you get bored, but the game is never afraid to allow you to be speared by a sawfish or torn to pieces by a roving shark.

There are also many adventures to be had, helping dolphins and discovering underwater worlds long since lost to the modern age. These adventures feel spontaneous and fit well within the overarching narrative. 

I was disheartened to see that this forms half of the game for someone who never plays restaurant games. However, it wasn’t long before I was gleefully slinging sushi like a pro.

The restaurant has many side-quests, such as VIP guests demanding specific, rare meals like shark head. And dynamics such as the app customers use to rate your food and the ability to recruit staff give the restaurant sections depth and variety.

The cleverest thing about Dave The Diver is how the restaurant and underwater elements blend perfectly. Just like a pina colada and the beach or lager and chips. Both aspects of the game feed into each other and give the whole game a coherent, purposeful feel.

“The pacing of Dave The Diver can feel intense at times”

This game has about as many game dynamics as apps on the latest iPhone. On many occasions, as you return to the boat before a dive, you are lumbered with another character, dynamic, and the accompanying app to access on your in-game phone. And not always in a good way.

At first, these new dynamics felt overwhelming for my ageing millennial brain. And throughout the game, it can be irritating to use your phone to ring people and constantly check apps. It’s hard to know if this was designed as a fun or infuriating feature. In the end, it’s a little of both.

But the overarching theme of environmentalism conveyed through the app quests seems to interlink with the fact that we are all too buried in our phones to care about the real world.

The pacing of Dave The Diver can feel intense at times. It’s not just new characters and dynamics thrown at the player but also new stories and quests around every coral reef.

But this seems to have been done to ensure that the sleepiness of the ocean dives doesn’t feel lethargic or repetitive. And for this, it succeeds perfectly.

To summarise the gameplay experience, the duality between the restaurant and diving works well as a pleasing, engaging experience that will have you playing for hours.  

Sounds of the sea

The soundtrack to the sea is as tropical, disorientating, and otherworldly as you would hope in Dave, The Diver as you plunge below the surface.

And the music that plays in the sushi restaurant conveys the business of a popular restaurant that will have you rushing about in your island paradise.

Sound effects are well-designed, immersive, and atmospheric. It is fun to hear characters in there mumbling made-up sounds, all tailored to their personality. From a peppy uni student who demands that Dave dive for shells in her high voice to Bancho, the sushi chef, with his low, authoritative sounds. 

Emotive response

From initially playing the demo in Steam Fest to getting my hands on the final product, I have been impressed beyond expectations. I never had heard of publisher-developer Mintrocket, which made Dave The Diver a hit that seemingly came out of nowhere. But this is a studio I will be following in the future. That’s if I can tear myself away from diving for rare fish, and pearls and discovering lost civilizations. 

DAVE THE DIVER is available on Steam for £15.29 for a limited time.