Dave the Diver

The care and craft that went into this game is amazing. So many little moments are polished to perfection. I can’t belive that this game is pitched as a “fishing and resturant simiulation”. It’s a love letter to gaming and it’s a joy to play.

A slight disclaimer: I got waay into this game on my own, well after the kids had given up on it. They even staged a small intervention for me.

For the kids, this game starts out great. Dave is cute, the fishing is zen, and the restaurant is tricky but not too hard. But it keeps on evolving and complexifying. That might also be great! But for my kids, it got to be too much to manage after a few hours of gameplay. They were mostly in it for the fishing and undersea exploration. There’s a bit of dying/drowning at play, which also stressed them out. All in all, it’s likely something that looks friendly but is better aimed at teens and not my tween and pre-tween.

For me, whoa. The plot goes wild places! The restaurant management rewards time spent managing the menu and ingredients! I got really into it. But the ever increasing complexity then came for me as well. I started spending more and more time trying to kinda min/max my earnings and keep the plot moving. But it was rewarding! The game mechanics are really well designed to reward being diligent while not being too hard. But I was in too deep. At one point getting killed by a sawtooth shark (my personal nemesis) towards the end of a long dive was very frustrating. That’s when I realized the game was no longer bringing me joy. So we’re currently on a break.

It’s a very good game, but it can turn into a bit of a grind if you, like me, succumb to those kinda prompts. And the kids have moved back to Minecraft and Tangle Tower.