DAVE THE DIVER is a casual adventure RPG that doubles as a restaurant management game developed by MINTROCKET. Read on to learn all our thoughts about the game and if it’s worth your time and money.
DAVE THE DIVER Review Overview
DAVE THE DIVER Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Great Synergy Between Sea Exploration and Restaurant Management Excellent Art Direction |
Artificially Lengthened Story One-Dimensional Characters |
DAVE THE DIVER Overall - 84/100
DAVE THE DIVER has great synergy between its underwater exploration and restaurant management, with both having expansive systems in place to support one another. Having great visuals, many will want to explore great seascapes of coral reefs filled with bustling fauna waiting to be caught. The vibrant soundtrack matches and enhances all situations of calm, cozy, or even intensity that the game contains. However, the story falls into multiple narrative pitfalls that causes most of the development to fall flat and reach shy of the awe-inspiring story it wanted to be. In spite of that, it’s still filled with magnificent set pieces and tons of replayability at such a low price.
DAVE THE DIVER Story - 6/10
The game starts off very strong with each introduction of its cast of wonderful characters, instantly pulling you in. However, as the game continues, the narrative tries to expand with another set of characters in an effort to become bigger. Previously introduced characters are set aside in service of the grander story the game wants to focus on. It ultimately fails to BE grand, due to the dissonance between the first and the second set of characters. The story also undergoes glaring pacing issues, due to quests being artificially stalled in order for the narrative to last longer than it should. All in all, DAVE THE DIVER contains a wonderful cast of zany characters with an overarching mystery plot, but fails to deliver a well-connected narrative that makes use of said great cast.
DAVE THE DIVER Gameplay - 9/10
DAVE THE DIVER does well with keeping the main deepsea diving gameplay fresh, with new weapons, charms, and utility that aid in capture and survival. The underwater topology and its fish populations change for each different dive, weather condition, and time of day. These varying factors ensure that no dive is ever the same. The restaurant management’s success all depends on the staff you hire, the menus you create, and the ingredients you provide, resulting in great player expression and consequences. My only gripes would be some isolated minigames that are just sprung out of nowhere and are forced to be played for story content, or played for random quirkiness in between downtimes.
DAVE THE DIVER Visuals - 9/10
DAVE THE DIVER masterfully blends between 2D character pixel art and 3D fish models and environments. The 2D pixel sprites carefully camouflage among the 3D aspects so nothing looks out of place, creating underwater seascapes that immerse players being out in the sea. There are also frequent pixel-animated cutscenes that add so much charm to the game. The UI is no slouch either, being very sleek and immediately informative and non-distracting. However, there’s a small issue of lacking visual accessibility options important for deep sea diving. Nevertheless, love and attention was clearly put into the visuals, and DAVE THE DIVER’s art team deserves all the praise.
DAVE THE DIVER Audio - 8/10
The game has an abundance of short but sweet music tracks of varying genres that complement the energy of their environments and scenarios. You’ll find yourself chilling with lo-fi vibes ringing across the calm grandeur of the ocean, to then be pumping high octane electro as you fight off a gigantic sea creature. Though the tracklist number is high, DAVE THE DIVER doesn’t have much variance for its most repeated sections of the game, leading to over repetition of certain tracks. The best music is in the sushi bar, where the hip hop tracks elevate the ambience the most. Hot Pepper Tuna is lowkey fire, pun intended.
DAVE THE DIVER Value for Money - 10/10
DAVE THE DIVER costs $19.99 and contains an immense amount of content available. Hours upon hours of story quests, sidequests, new systems, and minigames are gradually unlocked from story progression. With a seemingly endless amount of features amounting to a multitude of hours to playtime, it is no doubt worth the price and more.
DAVE THE DIVER Review: Way Too Many Fish in the Sea
Pros of DAVE THE DIVER
| Things DAVE THE DIVER Got Right |
|---|
|
Great Synergy Between Sea Exploration and Restaurant Management Excellent Art Direction |
Great Synergy Between Sea Exploration and Restaurant Management
To implement two big genres into a game poses the risk of compromising the fun and functionality of both, but DAVE THE DIVER triumphantly succeeds in doing so, and more. It would’ve been so easy to only focus on deepsea diving, and let the restaurant management be an afterthought avenue to sell fish caught. The reverse could be the same, with a restaurant management game where random fish could be bought from divers. MINTROCKET went far and beyond to seamlessly connect the two, and then some.
With a vast array of fish and hostile creatures living in the depths, every single one consequently unlocks new and different recipes. Getting more of each fish is encouraged to level the recipes up. Selling higher leveled recipes grants more money. Then, that money could be spent to upgrade gear, oxygen limit, carry limit, and weapons. It’s a basic economic cycle that doesn’t try to do too much. So simple, yet it eventually evolves into an addiction of the gnawing desire to go "One more dive!" or "One more dinner service!"
Excellent Art Direction
I’m a huge sucker for pixel art, and DAVE THE DIVER is full of eye candy and wonder. From the first dive and seeing the scene just below the water’s surface, I knew I was in good hands. The blending of 2D sprites and 3D models for the environment was masterfully done. It was fascinating to discover beautiful under-waterscapes filled with marine flora and fauna just through the simple act of slowly swimming around.
The wonderful pixel cutscenes interspersed across the game are so well directed and animated which lends the whole experience to be lighthearted fun. Nothing extraordinary with the character designs, but their subtly-changing facial expressions complete the charm of an already alluring game.
Cons of DAVE THE DIVER
| Things DAVE THE DIVER Can Improve |
|---|
|
Artificially Lengthened Story One-Dimensional Characters |
Artificially Lengthened Story
When I say artificially lengthened, I mean the story quests love stalling and blocking progress, devolving much of the main story into fetch quests. Several times, the game will force players to return later or on a completely other day. The game reasons that you need to wait before progression can resume, or you need to reconvene with your friends at the surface for help. A couple of times, this reasoning is completely passable. But DAVE THE DIVER does this so often throughout the game for almost each chapter that it ends up feeling like a cop out or a crutch for the writers.
Sure, you can say they’re giving enough leeway for the player to grind, level up, or do other chores, but that should be ON the player to decide whether they want to pause the main story and do something else. Setting a hard stop for all is rather uninspired, and unnecessarily bloats the length of the story.
One-Dimensional Characters
The game slowly introduces all characters one by one, and each introduction gets more comical as it goes on, hooking you in. It eventually becomes apparent that all characters are exaggerated caricatures of certain personalities. Then after a while, they reveal a main character’s backstory and motive, seemingly setting the stakes and what will most likely be a plot point of the story. Then, nothing happens. I was honestly so eager to discover where the character exposition was building up to, but was extremely disappointed to find all that buildup got dismissed. By the end, everyone stayed as one-dimensional characters, with no one expressing obvious or subtle growth or completing any character arcs. Only one person stood out, and they were from a short side quest that actually packed a lot of emotion. That one small quest proves they can make a compelling character arc, and I just wonder why they couldn’t do it with the other main characters.
Dave himself is a curious case, because he ends up not being a character at all. He receives a great introduction that immediately cues the player in of what he’ll be like, but all personality the intro cutscene gave him gradually vanishes over the course of the story. He has no agency nor primary objective, and all what he does are just what people request of him. His dialogue becomes rather robotic at times, because he’ll merely repeat what other people say. More prominently, he’ll directly explain or give hints to what we players must do, or give very surface level flavor text about events that had just transpired.
I would argue that Dave would’ve been better if he was a silent protagonist. Have all his personality be expressed through the visual comedy that the game is already excellent at, and leave all those hints and tutorials for in-game popups. In my personal belief, that would’ve been a better experience than reading Dave indirectly telling me how to proceed with a puzzle over and over again, or making robotic statements and reactions.
Is DAVE THE DIVER Worth It?
Come, The Ocean Beckons You
DAVE THE DIVER only costs $19.99 and has countless hours of gameplay and replayability. The underwater topology and fauna changes for every dive, ensuring tons of variety and motivation for players to explore and find different fish. If you get bored with sea exploration, there are several other minigames or features which you can indulge upon, such as farming or fish breeding. Don’t forget about the intense but satisfying restaurant management aspect of the game at night.
With so many features and genres that make up the game, the price is an absolute steal. Anyone who has time to kill should take up DAVE THE DIVER.
DAVE THE DIVER Overview & Premise
In DAVE THE DIVER, you play as Dave, a diver who has a love for marine adventure. During the day, he descends down into a mysterious oceanic trench dubbed the Blue Hole, and at night, he works at a sushi bar by the ocean. His search for wonders and secrets in the deep waters gets him into all sorts of trouble with the subaquatic life and with other explorers. However, all of those difficulties are nothing compared to the hardship of dealing with customers at the Bancho Sushi.
DAVE THE DIVER Product Information
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|
| Title | DAVE THE DIVER |
|---|---|
| Release Date | June 28, 2023 (PC), October 26, 2023 (Switch) |
| Developer | MINTROCKET |
| Publisher | MINTROCKET(PC), NEXON(Switch) |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Mac, Switch |
| Genre | Casual, Adventure, RPG, Fishing, Restaurant Management |
| Number of Players | Single-Player |
| ESRB Rating | E |
| Official Website | MINTROCKET Website |
