Dave the Diver is a casual, side-scrolling adventure/simulation game where you scuba dive during the day and manage a sushi restaurant at night.  The soundtrack is quite relaxing, and the pixel art is vibrant, making you feel like you’re in a virtual vacation.  The demo spans three days, during which you catch fish for the restaurant, serve hungry customers, and even get a few extra sidequests to spice things up a bit.  It seems there could be an interesting story, as well, involving the mysterious Blue Hole in which you dive, which attracts fish from all over the world and whose terrain changes daily, meaning you won’t be exploring the exact same location day after day.

Gameplay is split into two main categories.  You get to scuba dive twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.  During this time, you must manage your oxygen and make sure you don’t go above your weight limit as you harpoon fish for the restaurant and seek out other items for quests.  During the demo, I was given quests to collect red starfish and agar and even a relic from an underwater civilization.  You can also obtain weapons, such as melee weapons for self-defense against hostile fishies and for breaking things down for resources, and I even got some sort of underwater gun, though I never ended up using it.  Furthermore, you can spend the money you earn on upgrades, such as a better dive suit that allows you to descend to even greater depths or more oxygen or a higher weight limit.

As for managing the restaurant, that all seems pretty easy so far.  Using the fish you caught during the day, you put items on the menu, and you can enhance their flavor for even greater earnings if you have just the right ingredients.  Customers come in, and you’ll want to serve them their orders or pour green tea quickly before they get annoyed.  I do wonder how stressful this can eventually get if your restaurant becomes more popular, though.  It also looks like you can eventually hire another chef, and it seems like you can upgrade your restaurant, as well?  At the very least, there is an option to add more menu items once you get more followers on social media.

This seems like a pretty fun and charming game, though there are a few important things to add based on my own brief experience and reviews I read online.  For one thing, people pointed out that many of the NPC’s can be quite rude, which is definitely something I noticed.  I also read that the game is not as relaxing as one might think.  Aside from the nightly stress of serving customers, the game actually has boss fights, which is not something I was expecting from a game like this.  Perhaps this partly explains the comments I read saying the game tries to do too many things.  In addition to the boss fights, people mentioned a lot of weird minigames, including a sneaking mission that multiple people called out as being annoying.  Others also called the game boring and repetitive, so…

While Dave the Diver looks fun, I do agree with people’s sentiments that a game should probably try to do less, but do it well.  I guess it all depends on if you want a simpler game with fewer mechanics to master or if you want something that offers more variety.  (Might I recommend another ocean-themed game called Dredge, which follows the less is more mindset.)  With that said, Dave the Diver is $19.99 (but I’ve seen it go on sale for $12.99) and available on PC, Nintendo Switch, and PS4 and PS5 and can take at least 25 hours to complete for the main story, making it a great price for what you get out of it.