Dave the Diver is basically Feature Creep: the Game (Complimentary?)
Over the summer, while thinking about how Dredge was a surprise in my 'best of 2023' games, I remembered there was a DLC crossover it did with another game I hadn't played - so on a whim I decided to pick up Dave the Diver.
It's ended up taking up weekends in a way I never would have expected. The more I play this game, the more I'm absolutely baffled by how much has gone into it? Don’t get me wrong - I’m having a blast, but it feels like every two-to-three in-game days a new, entirely different mechanical feature surfaces,1 and while it doesn’t heavily divert from the primary “dive, catch, sushi restaurant night” loop, it’s mind-boggling how many moving parts there are - and how many keep getting added.
As of this moment I'm in Chapter 5 (and I believe there are 6-7 total?) so I can see the end in sight narratively; if you have any interest in playing it I won’t spoil things here (and I do recommend it!!) but like given how the game's credits play at the start (the list is LONG) it's clear this game had a massive team and some staff had to be solely dedicated to random minigames and side features. Why does Dave’s phone have a fully functional calculator? A Tamagotchi? Who was in charge of the seahorse racing? Was no one ever told "no"? Was no idea prototyped ever cut? Most of the gameplay changes have a visual stylistic change, but there's one later on that presents visually like the main game but you play controlling two characters at once with one analog stick for each. It's unhinged (Complimentary).
And on top of this, beneath the surface (I'm sorry) there's a disconnect between the game's "we must protect the ocean" messages while also hunting as many fish as possible for a hyper-capitalist Burt Reynolds stand-in's sushi restaurant - which is why the fish encyclopedia / Pokemon card minigames / functions feel at least more in line with the game's original pitch; a mobile title that was developed in conjunction with National Geographic.
If you can find the gameplay demos from 2018, Dave had a camera as the main interaction with fish instead of a harpoon; the harpoon was only used to fight off what look like mechanical drones of some sort - and there was a trash vacuum weapon to suck up garbage. Clean the ocean. Catalog, but not harm the fish. It also appears to have taken place in real locations (Greece in the demos) as opposed to a rogue-gameplay-explanation-magical-blue-hole that changes every time and contains fish from all over the world and makes it "ok" to poach from.
Given the above, it's fascinating to see the iteration from 2018 and the final result - I can't imagine the Cobra and the sushi restaurant portion of the game (which is non-insignificant in terms of both gameplay and story) were even present in the original, which also makes me wonder if some of the environmental story beats from the released version (save the sea turtles, help the dolphins etc) were from the original build and, much like the various mechanical addons and minigames, were never cut.
As a sidenote, I'm a lifelong fan of the avocado-skinned radioactive monster and kind of offended I didn't know about the Godzilla DLC until an article about how it's going to be pulled from the store as a limited time event came across my newsfeed. The Godzilla DLC is an incredible (if not baffling) addition. A Showa-era monster with Hesei-era Godzilla and characters, and some (you guessed it) more minigames and gameplay changes to boot. If you haven't picked it up, it leaves November 23rd and it's free.
Anyway if you've read this far - you deserve a cat.
Please enjoy.
Now granted - I haven't played the vanilla version of the game before the DLC, but the Dredge and Godzilla sections don't even unlock until about Chapter 4-5 and really don't take away from the "I went to bed and now I have to learn a whole new system" feeling. I can think of maybe one time where I accidentally doubled up on events and had both Dredge and original game stuff being explained simultaneously but by that point I was already at "oh my GOD ANOTHER ONE?" when new things would unlock.↩