MeinMMO editor Lydia was skeptical as to whether the summer hit Dave The Diver (Steam) was right for her. Now she is excited about the diving game and wants to share her experiences with you.
The diving game “Dave The Diver” was probably the surprise hit of summer 2023: a week after its release on June 28th, it had sold over 1 million copies, and in the summer sale at the beginning of July it was in the top 5 best-selling Play on Steam (via SteamDB).
If you haven’t heard of this great game yet, I’ll summarize the most important points for you here:
Dave The Diver is basically a roguelite, even if it doesn’t describe itself as such. A dive corresponds to a run in which you encounter numerous smaller and larger enemies and at some point have to face a huge boss.
Between runs, you can upgrade your equipment to dive deeper, have more oxygen (aka life), carry more weight, or do more damage. You can see for yourself in the trailer here:
Trailer: Steam summer hit 2023 – Dave the Diver
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Love at first click?
I picked up Dave The Diver in the Summer Sale on Steam because the overwhelming praise made me curious and I can’t say “no” to a good deal anyway. But then it went into my “Pile of Shame”.
Although my heart beats for unusual games and I have a weakness for pixel art – and although my colleague Nicole enthusiastically recommended it to me – I was unsure whether this game could really be for me.
Since fishing games had played little to no role in my gaming life so far, there was no way I could be excited about another fishing game this year after Dredge, right? Well, I was wrong.
From the opening sequence, Dave The Diver captivated me with his charming characters. Once I was able to start exploring the diverse underwater world, I didn’t want to put the game down at all.
Between fishing, farming and serving, time flies
I would most likely compare it to Moonlighter, where you descend into dungeons at night to sell your loot in your shop during the day. By the way, it’s still available dirt cheap on Steam until November 2nd.
Dave The Diver doesn’t just leave it at the simple premise, but gradually introduces new mechanics: you quickly take care of your own fish and vegetable farms, collect fish like Pokémon cards and raise a Tamagotchi-like pet .
There are also sections in which you have to infiltrate an enemy base, escape in a boat or switch between two characters to solve simple puzzles. Oh, and there was also a rhythm game. Some of these levels were so well designed that I would have happily played them multiple times.
And then there are never any huge bosses that await you at the end of each chapter and after some side quests. These special enemies are varied in design and mostly require mechanics introduced in previous sections.
Especially towards the end, it took me several attempts with one or two bosses until I got their attack patterns down after I was caught off guard by a second phase. And yes, at the end the bosses also drop ingredients that you can then process into unique dishes.
However, this should be carefully considered, because as far as I know, these items only drop once.
Like a warm sea breeze for the soul
Overall, however, Dave The Diver is not a difficult game and is generous with checkpoints in the sequences that use different mechanics than the tried and tested gameplay loop. However, in typical roguelite fashion, your first few runs may end rather abruptly until you can upgrade your equipment.
However, there is no real stress involved. Except maybe the one time when I completed three long missions including boss fights in a row without returning to save in between – only to be killed by a simple shark when it appeared because I was greedy and wanted to take it with me too. But we don’t talk about that.
Instead, the game is perfect for unwinding a bit. Especially now that the days are getting shorter, grayer and rainier, I’m enjoying diving into the tropical-looking game world a little more and absorbing the summer vibes.
“Oh come on, I’ll do that now… when did it become night?”
In theory, Dave The Diver is ideal for diving for one or two laps every now and then, because you can decide for yourself when you want to return to the surface. In fact, there was always something that triggered this “Just a moment…” feeling in me:
So in the end it was only rare that it remained a short gaming session. I’m currently in the postgame, the plot is complete, I just need to tidy up a few loose ends. At this point at the latest I usually get restless and get the urge to do everything quickly and move on to the next game.
Instead, I don’t want my adventure to end at the Blue Hole at the moment. I still dive in to work on my fish collection and earn money to improve my farms, level up my employees or treat myself to power-ups that would have made the main story easier for me.
So if you don’t feel like the cloudy autumn weather, I can only recommend you give the friendly diver a chance. And even if you’ve already taken a look at the game during the big Dave hype in the summer, it might be worth checking out again.
The October 11th update just added some new content, including new side quests and crab traps that you can use to catch shellfish.
If, despite everything, you can’t do anything with Dave The Diver, you are objectively wrong, but I would like to recommend the aforementioned Dredge instead. Because that too will be provided with new content this year.
In a new strategy game on Steam I’m conquering the galaxy in an environmentally friendly way