The Charming, Insatiable Gameplay Loop of Dave the Diver

The opaque, mysterious depths of the deep ocean are about as good a setting for a survival-based videogame as one could possibly hope to be gifted. In so many respects, the ocean mimics the inhospitable void of outer space in these scenarios, right down to the “weightlessness” and need for special equipment to sustain human life in a place where it was simply never meant to explore. Popular games such as the Subnautica franchise have successfully mined both the wonder and terror of the setting, leaning into the claustrophobic feeling of knowing that you have miles and miles of watery expanse bearing down on you at any given moment. But leave it to an unexpectedly charming game like Dave the Diver to throw itself into the same territory while evoking entirely different feelings. There’s nothing here so harrowing as a first encounter with a massive undersea creature in Subnautica, nor is there intended to be. “Survival” may technically be part of the pitch, but Dave the Diver flips the script by making survival elementary rather than desperate in most situations. Instead, it embraces a cozier ocean diving mechanic and then adds richness to that experience with a dizzying, often hilariously random suite of minigames and secondary gameplay elements, the likes of which continue to be introduced right up to the conclusion of its main storyline. Like an abyssal trench, it’s far deeper than it initially appears.

Dave the Diver thrusts the player into the role of the titular Dave, a goodhearted if seemingly milquetoast man who is continuously getting roped into exploiting his scuba diving abilities in order to assist or help others. You’re recruited by your pushy friend/financier/fortune seeker Cobra to relocate your diving operations to The Blue Hole, a newly discovered ecological wonder that seems to contain fish species from all over the world in a descending strata of biomes. There, Cobra has opened a new sushi restaurant that will serve this bountiful array of seafood, run by the enigmatic and uncompromising chef Bancho, who insists on experimentation with unconventional ingredients. As Dave, your primary duty is to keep that supply of ingredients flowing … until, of course, you’re also roped into day-to-day restaurant operations, thwarting plots by eco-terrorists, and exploring the source of the region’s earthquakes, which may be related to the fate of an ancient, undersea civilization of mer-people. Oh, and that’s not to mention all of the farming (on land and underwater), tool-crafting and seahorse-racing that you’re also going to be doing.

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It’s this breadth that makes Dave the Diver into a memorably off-kilter experience. The game throws such a dizzying array of odd experiences and mini-games at you–many of them never to be repeated again–that it never has a chance to grow stale, because there’s always some odd new mechanic being introduced. It makes the entire thing nearly unclassifiable in terms of genre, being one part Metroidvania exploration adventure, one part resource gathering/crafting and one part restaurant management simulator, all of them entirely charming. But that’s just scratching the surface, as there are brief segments that bring in elements from rhythm games, puzzle games, stealth/infiltration games, racing games, or Mario Party-style absurdist minigames built around following directions, fighting or even good old fashioned button mashing. Every time you think Dave the Diver is finally ready to rest on its laurels, it cooks up some silly new task for you–even an It Takes Two-style segment where the player must simultaneously control two characters in order to navigate a labyrinth of obstacles. It should be noted that all are delivered with a relatively low level of difficulty, because Dave the Diver is less interested in challenging a player’s skill than it is in gently guiding them through its comforting, low-stakes story.

Through it all, though, the thing that truly hooks the player is the tightness of the central gameplay loop: You dive, you collect sea life and other various ingredients and resources, and you return in the evening to run another shift at Bancho Sushi. In the world of the game, Dave is effectively the restaurant’s gofer, the guy who steps in to do whatever task needs to be done at the moment, whether that’s procuring ingredients, taking orders, pouring drinks or scrubbing tables. But effectively, the player is genuinely more of a manager-owner than any of the supporting characters, because it’s you building the restaurant’s menu on a nightly basis, hiring and training staff, and making sure things run smoothly. Bancho may be the genius artisan behind why the sushi tastes so great–there’s a definitely streak of Ratatouille running through the many instances where he convinces doubters of his food’s brilliance–but Dave is the one facilitating it all. The restaurant would collapse in a second without you, and that knowledge adds intrigue and purpose to each dive, with the player using their memory to recall where specific ingredients can be found that you want to add to the menu, or upgrade existing dishes. This also gives the player reason to want to explore beyond mere “I haven’t been to this area yet,” because you’re always on the lookout for new acquisitions that could benefit the restaurant. It forms an addictive “one more time” loop, as each time you’re in the water, you’re thinking about the next sushi restaurant shift, and each time you’re bussing tables you’re making a mental checklist for which items you want to find on the next dive.

That loop is so inherently addictive, in fact, and the joy of making more and more money on a nightly basis at the restaurant is such a strong motivator, that your tasks to complete the actual, main storyline of Dave the Diver sometimes become activities you’re doing more under protest than anything. Many is the time that I’ve been in the midst of completing various puzzles to aid my undersea friends, and what I really want is just to get back to the restaurant and unlock some new recipes. Rarely has entrepreneurship seemed like more of a thrill in a gaming, at least partially in this case because you feel such a sense of ownership as the guy catching all this fish on a daily basis.

There’s a simple, understated joy in playing a game where the natural tendency toward exploration serves to lift up and improve life for all the other characters around you. The player would already probably be interested in diving ever deeper into the Blue Hole because we inherently want to know what’s down there, but it means more as the game slowly fleshes out the stories of someone like Bancho, the misunderstood chef whose food has never been fairly appraised, or Cobra the enigmatic financier. Hell, even the restaurant’s resident cat has some story development if you keep feeding him, culminating in a charmingly silly stealth sequence that sees Dave trying to follow the cat at night to discover where he’s been going. Additional free DLC likewise threads ridiculous events through the storyline to break up the regular routine, including crossovers with the similarly themed but more horrific sea exploration/fishing game Dredge, and even a dramatic appearance by the King of the Monsters himself, Godzilla. Is this the only game ever made where you run a sushi restaurant, then take control of Godzilla as he battles a giant lobster, and then craft a sushi entree based on that battle afterward? I have to assume that it is.

Dave the Diver is full of delights that are simplistic on their own, but find greater resonance in the way they’re layered deeply through every aspect of the experience. Whether or not you’ve ever longed to craft the perfectly aesthetically pleasing piece of sashimi, you’ll likely find something here that speaks to the inner artisan.

Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more film and TV writing.

Dive, Gather, Filet: The Charming, Insatiable Gameplay Loop of Dave the Diver