➤ Dave the Diver, the review of the hit game of the moment 🕹

Dave the Diver achieved great success on Steam in this hot summer of 2023 - here's our review, explaining why.

Although in recent years the world of consoles has also become a little more friendly to independent developers, it is undeniable that the PC - and Steam in particular - is the true kingdom of those small authors who try to succeed without having to throw themselves into the 220 dollars. million AAAs in the world. It is evident that Valve's platform is continually flooded with new titles and it is sometimes difficult to make a selection.

The best games, however, manage to emerge strongly especially when they are continually updated and expanded, as was the case with Dave the Diver. Currently only available on PC, Dave the Diver is also scheduled for Nintendo Switch during 2023.

With the arrival of version 1.0 on Steam, we took the opportunity to try this new ocean-themed adventure, which has impressed fans so much in recent times. here is ours Dave the Diver Review.

Fishing, cooking but not only at Dave the Diver

Dave the Diver, the review of the hit game of the moment — Dave the Diver is a diver and will spend most of his time underwater.

L'initial idea from Dave the Diver is very simple. We are Dave, a diver who is contacted by his businessman (and smuggler) friend Cobra for a new job opportunity. He goes fishing to supply a sushi restaurant located in front of a unique place in the world known as the Blue Hole where sea creatures from all the oceans gather in droves.

However, this is just the beginning and soon we will find ourselves interacting with a large number of characters and discovering a long story linked to a fishing population hidden in the depths. Dave is a softie and will offer to help anyone who crosses his path, whether it's retrieving materials from the water or exploring dark and dangerous submerged caves. Dave the Diver's story is nothing particularly original or exciting, but he is likable and perfectly capable of acting as glue for the gameplay.

How It Works But in detail Dave the Diver? A quick look at a video will give you an idea, but the truth is that Dave the Diver is more than the sum of its individual components and a video can miss a crucial detail: it's a fun game. We open the discussion this way because the truth is that each part of Dave the Diver, taken individually, is neither original nor particularly exciting, but the end result is excellent.

Le fishing phases They consist of exploring and hitting the fish in question with a harpoon, perhaps completing a QTE. You can then create firearms to fight the most powerful creatures (sharks, for example) and there is no shortage of bosses, each of which has their own attack patterns and often unique mechanics, such as having to counter the explosives that They throw us with a baseball.

Out of the water we have to manage the sushi restaurant, choosing the menu each night, improving the dishes (if you have enough fish of the right type), hiring additional chefs and waiters who can also be improved and have skills that help improve the efficiency of the place. However, all of these elements are very simple to manage and do not require skill. At a playable level we can bring dishes to customers, serve drinks and more, in a series of very simple small activities that are nothing more than QTEs.

With money we can then update our equipment, so we can go deeper, bring more fish to land, increase the oxygen reserve (which represents Dave's health and drops while we are underwater or when we get hit in a fight), and more. As we have said, we are not dealing with something unique and, above all, nothing profound. Dave the Diver takes care to come up with a lot of ideas without making them complex, which often leads to the creation of a boring and uninteresting game. However, this is not the case. Dave the Diver manages to find the perfect balance in all of his mechanics and creates an extremely satisfying gameplay loop.

Content about content

Dave the Diver is always fun because from the first moment he has a great rhythm, with all the different phases of the game never too long. Then events usually appear, such as themed evenings or the arrival of VIPs requesting special dishes, which always give us a short-term goal to pursue while we move forward with the more elaborate requests of the main plot.

Furthermore, fishing and restaurant management are only part of the overall package, which is very substantial. The whole adventure can easily take you dozens of hours and for a long time. You will continue to get new game items.. At some point, for example, the possibility of farming will be added, but also of managing a fish farm with eggs recovered from fishing.

Then there will be a whole safe underwater area where you can help the fishmen, race seahorses, play cards, complete requests and unlock areas for underwater farming and more. Side quests unlock their own bosses and generally allow you to obtain useful resources to complete other tasks. The end result is a mixture that pushes us to say "one more dive and then I'm out" for two hours straight. To break the rhythm, there is also no shortage of dungeons with small puzzles and stealth sections.

There is also the whole component of collect. In addition to having to find places to take photos of some unique specimens of sea creatures, you will need to obtain collector cards that will unlock each time you get a new fish. However, creatures have a level of quality depending on how we capture them (dead, wounded or unharmed) and collection cards also reflect this, pushing us to recapture all variants. Then there are creatures that are only available at night, a time when exploring is most dangerous. In short, Dave the Diver continually encourages us to try a new dive to make it even better than before.

So it's a perfect game? Obviously not. Even excluding the fact that there isn't an ounce of originality (a problem for some, irrelevant for others), Dave the Diver is a game graphically limited. Let's be clear, we soon liked the different settings and we must admit that the fish are well done, especially considering that many are a handful of pixels and little else, but they are always well recognizable. At the same time, however, it is undeniable that the 3D environments and some secondary areas are less visually impressive and soon become repetitive. Nothing too serious, but it's a shame that it wasn't possible to come up with something a little more refined. Some more advanced areas are of higher quality, a possible sign that the budget has increased as the game found success in Early Access.

So we believe that the restaurant management phase it ends too quickly. Maybe we were lucky, but very quickly we found high-quality employees with excellent statistics and soon there was no longer a need to do much: in the first hours we had to be careful to serve all the dishes on time, but then the employees were able to manage everything completely ourselves without the risk of dissatisfied customers. It is also a shame that there are no texts in Spanish: the level of English required is not particularly high, but in any case we know that for many it could be a problem.

Conclusions

Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Price 19,99 € Holygamerz.com 8.5 Readers (17) 8.2 your vote

Dave the Diver is much more than the sum of its individual components. It lacks originality and never delves very deeply into its various mechanics, but the end result is a game that is excellently paced, fun, full of content and that continues to propose new ideas even after hours and hours. Graphically it would have deserved a little more care, but taking into account that it is an indie we are sure that many will be able to overcome the problem easily. Unless originality is essential for you when approaching a video game, we definitely recommend Dave the Diver.