Dave the Diver is a sport a couple of diver named Dave. It is also a couple of restauranteur, archaeologist, marine researcher, and social media genius — additionally Dave. Poor ol’ Dave has to put on all these hats in Dave the Diver, and residing out his toilsome existence makes for among the finest video games of the 12 months and simply one of many Swap’s most intelligent indie video games in ages due to its oddly gripping loop, charming writing, constant humorousness, and immaculate vibes.
Anybody who’s labored at a bar or restaurant with a small workers will inform you that these jobs aren’t nearly prepping meals, ready on tables, or mixing cocktails. They’re filled with in-between, one-time duties, like operating to the grocery retailer for some recent citrus throughout a dinner rush or taking last-minute catering deliveries to visiting businessmen on the opposite facet of city. These extraneous duties that the homeowners cannot afford to rent somebody new to handle outline working at a mom-and-pop institution virtually as a lot as engaged on the road or behind the bar.
Dave the Diver understands these truths on a stage virtually by no means seen in a sport, and simply as hardly ever in different media. You will dive to catch the fish being served at Bancho Sushi one minute and assist handle the restaurant’s social media web page the subsequent. You will handle personnel, assist restore the restaurant, grate wasabi, and pour so, so a lot tea. You may very simply stop or discover one other job, however you care in regards to the individuals heaping their wants in your again and also you need — no, want — the restaurant to succeed; there’s an excessive amount of of your individual blood, sweat, and tears in its partitions and floorboards and kitchen so that you can let it fail.
This sport, which launched on PC and Mac in June, is bursting on the seams with bespoke minigames, cutscenes, interactions, and moments that seize the sensation of sporting the various hats you’re usually requested to when working within the service trade. The core loop resembles one thing like 2018’s roguelite-dungeon-crawler-meets-management-sim, Moonlighter.
Throughout the day, Dave goes diving within the Blue Gap; a fictional place someplace within the tropics the place fish from all oceans collect. Suppose the All Blue from One Piece, when you’re acquainted. Whilst you’re underwater, Dave’s aim is usually to search out and seize scrumptious fish to serve on the restaurant that night time. However generally, a neighborhood faculty pupil may ask him to seek for a specific sort of shell, or an archaeologist could have found remnants of an historical civilization and ask Dave to look into these traces.
Swimming feels good, and the Blue Gap is downright attractive with vibrant coral and fish dotting the higher ranges and extra threatening, and grotesque as you go deeper. It is a stark reminder that nowhere on Earth is kind of as cool because the ocean. Dave The Diver doubles down on its sense of marvel and discovery by randomly producing and re-generating the Blue Gap each time you dive, making each foray underwater really feel recent and new.
In actual fact, that freshness is so potent that it comes at a price to the general move of Dave The Diver. Many missions will job you with looking for stuff that is fallen to the ocean ground; stuff that solely spawns in a single place. Sadly, the sport does not make it clear {that a} given merchandise will at all times spawn someplace round 50 meters underneath the floor, for instance. It additionally does not present any monitoring or useful data past primary visible descriptors. That is high quality from a discovery standpoint and theoretically helps maintain issues sluggish and regular, however in a sport that feels so intent to push ahead regularly, it seems like swimming towards a riptide.
In typical roguelike vogue, there are a variety of skills and powers to select up that make scouring the deep for swimming delicacies all the simpler. Earlier than lengthy, you will have quite a few helpful instruments at your disposal to help in your exploration of the Blue Gap. Many are there that will help you hunt (or defend your self from) the pixel fish that populate the Blue Gap, just like the trusty harpoon gun, which spears fish with a satisfying whoosh, however does not at all times do the job. That is why you possibly can carry different weapons like rifles and knives that assist do extra injury towards extra formidable fauna like sharks, which perform as environmentally apt minibosses.
Then, after his two every day dives are completed, Dave moonlights as a waiter and supervisor at Bancho Suchi, which is conveniently perched on the fringe of the Gap. There, you will handle personnel, improve menu objects, create the night time’s menu based mostly in your catches from earlier within the day, run meals from the kitchen to ready clients, pour beer and tea, grate wasabi, and handle a handful of different duties that manifest as microgames.
Every service is transient, however energetic — particularly when you get into the thick of it. This sport faithfully recreates the sensation of a busy shift as a waiter. Clients get mad and go away if they do not get their meals in time, and so they do not tip as properly when you pour a pint with an excessive amount of head; Dave The Diver creates a tangible, satisfying sense of rigidity as you race to the top of the bar, hoping to get meals out to the client earlier than they get too fed-up. It feels nice to ship simply in time for diners to take pleasure in their order and go away a pleasant tip. On the finish of the night time, you will get a recap of how issues went and a ranking out of 5 stars based mostly on the restaurant’s efficiency. Doing properly will web you the power to analysis new dishes so as to add to the menu.
Nearly each metagame-level change you can also make, like upgrading a dish or crafting a brand new weapon to dive with comes with a bespoke animation that matches the character doing the motion. They’re at all times humorous and spotlight an offbeat humorousness that permeates Dave the Diver’s writing, gameplay, animations, and total presentation. And it actually cannot be overstated simply what number of of those particular person cutscenes there are. The identical goes for small gameplay-driven duties; they’re in every single place, they’re well-animated and realized, and are all innately satisfying.
A well-run service supplies bountiful advantages that relax to Dave’s diving exploits, and all of the microgames feed into one another. The fixed rotation between diving and serving melds collectively like the proper marriage of wasabi, fish, and seasoned rice in a chunk of lovingly crafted sushi.
Just like a Mario sport, Dave the Diver by no means permits you to get bored. As an alternative, it throws an limitless onslaught of latest concepts and mechanics at you. It is wealthy with little interactions that you just may solely see as soon as, and it guidelines. The continually altering ebb-and-flow will assuredly take a maintain in your consciousness in a means few video games can.
Conclusion
In a 12 months dominated by titanic, big-budget releases like Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Surprise, Dave the Diver steps as much as the plate and knocks the ball away from the park with a heaving swing. Its charming animations and writing complement a mechanically dense expertise that by no means stops dangling a brand new carrot to chase. It is one of many few video games to come back out this 12 months that rivals Mario Surprise’s all-out density and appeal whereas doing one thing virtually utterly new. You owe it to your self to select up this outstandingly humorous, enthralling, and bizarre gem.
