Dave the Diver is a sport a couple of diver named Dave. It’s additionally 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 dwelling out his toilsome existence makes for probably the greatest video games of the 12 months and simply one of many Switch’s most intelligent indie video games in ages due to its oddly gripping loop, charming writing, constant humorousness, and immaculate vibes.
Anyone 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 stuffed with in-between, one-time duties, like working to the grocery retailer for some contemporary citrus throughout a dinner rush or taking last-minute catering deliveries to visiting businessmen on the opposite aspect of city. These extraneous duties that the homeowners cannot afford to rent somebody new to deal with outline working at a mom-and-pop institution nearly as a lot as engaged on the road or behind the bar.
Dave the Diver understands these truths on a stage nearly by no means seen in a sport, and simply as not often in different media. You’ll dive to catch the fish being served at Bancho Sushi one minute and assist handle the restaurant’s social media web page the following. You’ll handle personnel, assist restore the restaurant, grate wasabi, and pour so, so a lot tea. You may very simply give up 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 typically requested to when working within the service business. The core loop resembles one thing like 2018’s roguelite-dungeon-crawler-meets-management-sim, Moonlighter.
During the day, Dave goes diving within the Blue Hole; a fictional place someplace within the tropics the place fish from all oceans collect. Think the All Blue from One Piece, when you’re acquainted. While you are underwater, Dave’s objective is usually to seek out and seize scrumptious fish to serve on the restaurant that evening. But generally, an area school pupil would possibly ask him to seek for a selected sort of shell, or an archaeologist might have found remnants of an historic civilization and ask Dave to look into these traces.
Swimming feels good, and the Blue Hole is downright beautiful with vibrant coral and fish dotting the higher ranges and extra threatening, and grotesque as you go deeper. It’s a stark reminder that nowhere on Earth is kind of as cool because the ocean. Dave The Diver doubles down on its sense of surprise and discovery by randomly producing and re-generating the Blue Hole each time you dive, making each foray underwater really feel contemporary and new.
In truth, that freshness is so potent that it comes at a value to the general move of Dave The Diver. Many missions will activity you with trying to find stuff that is fallen to the ocean flooring; stuff that solely spawns in a single place. Unfortunately, the sport would not make it clear {that a} given merchandise will all the time spawn someplace round 50 meters below the floor, for instance. It additionally would not present any monitoring or useful info past primary visible descriptors. That’s high quality from a discovery standpoint and theoretically helps hold issues sluggish and regular, however in a sport that feels so intent to push ahead regularly, it looks 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. Before lengthy, you may have numerous helpful instruments at your disposal to help in your exploration of the Blue Hole. Many are there that will help you hunt (or defend your self from) the pixel fish that populate the Blue Hole, just like the trusty harpoon gun, which spears fish with a satisfying whoosh, however would not all the time do the job. That’s why you’ll be able to 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 performed, Dave moonlights as a waiter and supervisor at Bancho Suchi, which is conveniently perched on the fringe of the Hole. There, you may handle personnel, improve menu gadgets, create the evening’s menu based mostly in your catches from earlier within the day, run meals from the kitchen to ready prospects, pour beer and tea, grate wasabi, and deal with a handful of different duties that manifest as microgames.
Each service is transient, however vigorous — particularly when you get into the thick of it. This sport faithfully recreates the sensation of a busy shift as a waiter. Customers get mad and go away if they do not get their meals in time, and so they do not tip as effectively 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 tip 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. At the tip of the evening, you may get a recap of how issues went and a score out of 5 stars based mostly on the restaurant’s efficiency. Doing effectively will internet you the flexibility to analysis new dishes so as to add to the menu.
Almost each metagame-level change you may 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 all the time 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 similar goes for small gameplay-driven duties; they’re in all places, 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 bit of lovingly crafted sushi.
Similar to a Mario sport, Dave the Diver by no means allows you to get bored. Instead, it throws an infinite onslaught of recent concepts and mechanics at you. It’s wealthy with little interactions that you just would possibly solely see as soon as, and it guidelines. The continuously altering ebb-and-flow will assuredly take a maintain in your consciousness in a manner few video games can.
Conclusion
In a 12 months dominated by titanic, big-budget releases like Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Wonder, 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’s one of many few video games to come back out this 12 months that rivals Mario Wonder’s all-out density and attraction whereas doing one thing nearly utterly new. You owe it to your self to select up this outstandingly humorous, enthralling, and bizarre gem.
