Dave the Diver (or DAVE THE DIVER as the company formats the name) is an interesting game. It was one of the most hyped games of 2023 and for a good reason. 2023 was a ridiculously hot year for gaming: game of the year DREDGE, Sea of Stars, Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Zelda: Tears of Kindgom and Pikmin 4 are just a few of the other games that came out in 2023.
Anyway, Dave the Diver is a game about catching fish and cooking fish. Kind of. You are playing as Dave, an old retired diver who’s called back to duty by a friend who wanted to get rich by putting Dave do all the work.
The game loop revolves around day cycle and each day, you’ll dive deeper into the depths of a blue hole to catch fish, explore the world and solve mysteries. Then, you take that fish to a sushi bar and craft a daily menu, serve customers and become the hottest sushi bar in the world.
The diving portion happens deep underwater in a beautiful and colorful area that’s full of different types of fish, corals, items and resources — and a mystery to be solved. You start with a knife and a harpoon and over time improve your gear and weapons to dive deeper and take care of even bigger fish. There are a lot of different side quests and mini games that keep the exploration fresh.
The sushi bar section is your classic restaurant management mini game: you have a chef you’ll make the dishes customers order and based on what you fished up earlier, you can set up a menu and rack up money. You can use the money then to either buy better gear for diving or hire more staff to help you cook and serve. There are a few mini games in the restaurant section too and you can customise the looks of the restaurant by spending your money on visual improvements.
It’s a really charming game. I skipped it in 2023 because I had been playing 2022 “dive into the depths to collect resources” game Dome Keeper a lot and from the promo material, thought this would be a similar one — and to some extent it is — so I didn’t buy it.
Inspired by Helmet Gaming Challenge 2026, I decided to finally pick it up and the game caught me into its web completely. It’s not as arduous as Dome Keeper and it has a lot more fun with lore and characters and eventually is a completely different game despite sharing the main mechanic of diving deeper into the depths.
Prior to buying the game, I had no idea there was a whole restaurant part to it and I have to say, if someone had told me this game combines rogue-lite-esque exploration with restaurant management, I would have said it’s probably not good in either. But somehow, it’s fun in both and it’s cool how it combines them: if you focus more on exploration, you’ll have less expensive dishes to sell in the evenings.
Most of the story missions are rather short to complete but to my knowledge, there’s no rush or timelines that you’d have to achieve something by a certain date. Other than maybe some restaurant events like parties that give you more money for specific fish meals.