Dave the Diver
Dave The Diver is a weird but well made game. Ostensibly it's a game about diving, but it's got so many other things going on that it's difficult to list them all. The main gameplay loop revolves around diving during the day, finding fish and condiments, then running a 2-minute restaurant minigame in the evening to sell your catches. There's a pretty lengthy main quest about saving a race of mermaids from a magic tree causing earthquakes & loads of other sidequests. The gameplay is solid (if a bit grindy) and it's mechanically well made. My only real criticism is that there are SO MANY random mechanics added that are only skin-deep and they feel like a bunch of kickstarter stretch goals.
Pros
- I like the graphics - kind of simple pixel art mixed with 3D environments
- All your equipment can be upgraded
- There are LOADS of different fish
- The restaurant provides nice break to diving, and gives you a good reason to go after certain fish
- There's a place where you can look at all the varieties of fish you've caught (although it's difficult to find what you're missing)
- The dialogue is really good. The main character dave is likeable and reminds me of the bear from Bear & Breakfast
- Bosses
- Craftable, upgradable weapons
- You can also catch small creatures like shrimp with a bug net for small creatures
One of the things I find so strange about this game is the huge number of mechanics they added. So plus points if you want to spend lots of busy time with these. The downside is that they're all very shallow. List of mechanics:
- Restaurant selling
- Staff, training, traits and upgrading
- Farming
- Eggs and chicken breeding
- Restaurant special customers and events
- Fish farming
- Photo spots
- Mini quests via the Eco-Watcher app in the in-game phone for things like "find 15 orange starfish" or "kill 5 predator fish"
- Seahorse racing
- "Fishmon" - special one-off fish to collect
- Fish cards to collect
- GYAO (a fish Tamagotchi)
- A music app
- Cooksta ratings for your restaurant based on an Instagram-style feed from NPCs
- A mail app
- In-game events for catching specific kinds of fish
- Staff management app
- Running a whole new restaurant as a branch
Cons
- It took me about 10 hours to discover that the third icon on meals means "servings". I assumed 1 meat = 1 serving.
- While on an early quest with the sunken ship, some dialogue got stuck on the screen that never went away, hid the UI and stopped me from pausing so I had to force quit the game
- The fish catching QuickTime events such as “mash the A button repeatedly” are way too difficult. I’m just about ok with them after 2-3 attempts, but it would make the game unplayable for people with RSI or slower reflexes. Later, they added an accessibility option to let you hold a button instead of mashing it - except that holding the button down doesn't mash the button fast enough to succeed at the attempt, which makes it pointless
- The Steam Deck only gets 35fps in the Sea People Village. In general, Steam Deck performance is not very good, which is weird considering the game has simplistic graphics
- I have no idea how many meals to serve per night even after 20 hours
- There’s a restaurant in the Sea People village that give you buffs, that only last for your current dive session. Why would I spend money on something that buffs harpoon damage by 10% for the next 10 minutes?
- I got killed during a cutscene, then the game kicked me back to the title screen and said "saving failed"
- The boss fights are complete rubbish. They're mostly huge monsters that move faster than you can swim, and just move into you until you die. Don't bother with any of the optional ones until you max out your oxygen
- So many mechanics added for 2 minutes. Even in the last quest of the game, the following completely new features were introduced: swapping between two characters, dave walking on land, controlling 2 characters at once with the controller, and a carried missile launcher. It literally thew in a new mechanic for fish Tamagotchi as I was about to jump in the water for the final boss fight. And then it also said "by the way you can also run a whole new restaurant as a branch" - in the last 5 minutes of the game. Oh and the last boss is basically a R-Type style shooting game, completely different to anything else.