24-46+ hours to complete, Dave the Diver is a single-player RPG where you dive for fresh fish in the Blue Hole by day and serve your catches by night in a restaurant-style management sim. Hire employees, farm fresh ingredients, prepare the menu, and get rewarded by having customers upload photos of their orders online to increase your rankings! Surprisingly roguelike, the areas you dive in randomly change, and fish vary based on night or day diving. Weapons and support items are randomized, aside from the firearms you build and bring with you. There are boss fights! All are pretty fun and have different mechanics, my deepest regret is that I can only cook them once.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3294305413
As an extra tidbit, I highly suggest picking up the free Godzilla DLC before the licensing expires on November 23rd, 2024 as well as the free DREDGE DLC. As strange as it sounds, it’s not intrusive to the overall Dave the Diver gameplay and both DLCs have a pretty amazing amount of content and fun menu additions to add to your restaurant. Don’t miss out! There is an accessibility setting to automate button tapping for most of the QTEs.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3294307581

Overview
Dave the Diver is a mix of a diving adventure, with some light simulation elements, and a restaurant manager in form of a Sushi bar, garnished with a lovely story and wrapped up in beautiful 2d pixel graphics. And you can feed cats :3

Gameplay
The general gameplay can be loosely sorted into 3 categories.
Diving and collecting loot and fish for the restaurant, doing main and/or side story missions and working and managing the restaurant.

Your day starts on your trusty boat in the morning (each day is divided into morning/afternoon/evening) and you set out to dive into the Blue Hole to collect fish / materials and other things for yourself and for your restaurant, or follow other various activities, the same happens in the afternoon and in the evening, you work in the restaurant.
And while this may sound like a repetitive and boring – it is far from that.
The Blue Hole is generated randomly to a degree. So while you might find certain fishes in the same depth regions, there is always some variation to the landscape and loot. Three times a week you can also put in an extra dive in the evening which allows you to hunt different fishes which only come out at night, but be careful, it’s dangerous!

When you work for the restaurant, your job is to set up the menu, upgrade dishes and serve customers. With time you can hire new stuff and level them up to help you with the service or send them out on missions to collect certain ingredients.

There are also some more unlocks later, but I don’t want to spoil anything here.

The money you make is used in various ways. To upgrade Dave’s gear, so he can dive for longer, carry more or dive deeper. Buy vanity items for the restaurant and other crafting efforts.

Also later in the game, you unlock various side activities, which I won’t mention here.

What I like about Dave/tl;dr
-The graphics, Dave the Diver is certainly one of the most beautiful pixel art style games ever released, every part of the game is filled with lovely details, vibrant colors and lovely animations that often just put a big smile on your face.
-You can feed and pat cats!
-Beside the fantastic general gameplay, there are also a lot of side activities later in the game, which are just there to be enjoyed and nothing else.
-The main story, but also the side stories are so much fun to play through
-Characters/npcs – so many interesting personalities’, each with their own funny quirks and goals
-Did I mention that you can pet cats?
-Exploration: the Blue hole is vast, deep and filled with things to uncover
-It’s fun to work the restaurant and see how it improves with time.


Dave the Diver works so well as a game, all aspects of it go hand in hand together, from the gathering and upgrading to the restaurant management and Story, it all combines to an amazing and enjoyable adventure which I can only recommend.

one of the best indie game <3

- Addictive gameplay loop and management system.
- It remains interesting due to the well-placed game elements.
- Simple, cozy, and beautifully presented world.
- Funny characters and references.
- You can feed a cat.

9/10 ❤

Very fun and casual game with a slight increase in things to do as you progress. I went in thinking it was just fishing with some selling of sushi after each day, but there's also some farming and a nice story to go along with it. Can probably knock out the main story stuff in 20-30 hours, but I kept playing even after finishing the story to complete as much as I could. Will definitely come back to play when more DLC comes out.

Very good, not shallow at all for what it is.
I had a great time.

Way more fun than I had expected when I bought it. Excellent game, give it a try.

It really is as good as people say it is

i love fish

amazing diving should be made into a real life sport.

Nice relaxing game, played completely on steam deck