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Dave the Diver is a casual, singleplayer adventure RPG featuring deep-sea exploration and fishing during the day and sushi restaurant management at night. Join Dave and his quirky friends as they seek to uncover the secrets of the mysterious Blue Hole. https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256955037/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1687942831 Dave the Diver is a cute little fishing/diving game where the core game loop consists of diving into the blue hole to catch fish by day and serving the fish in a sushi restaurant at night. At first, you have one cook and you serve by yourself. Then you hire employees. Then you start farming. And it keeps going. It honestly keeps adding more and more stuff way beyond what I expected with various minigames every now and then. The core loop is extremely good and fun. You hunt fish then sell sushi and use the money for personal upgrades or employees or a bunch of other stuff. Dave gets a melee, harpoon and gun to start off with although the melee and harpoon only get temporary upgrades underwater while the gun can be customized and upgraded in various ways permanently. The pixel art is incredibly charming and works well even in cutscenes, most of which are hilarious. Every new cutscene is a treat. I dropped basically all my other games to play this and I'm still not done after 35~ hours. I think my only complaint is that the special drops for upgrading guns can be a bit too grindy and the lack of automation for lategame farming gets tedious. Otherwise, A++++ game, highly recommend. Works perfectly on Steam deck too.
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 06:20 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 12:42 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFSicBmL-zI
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 06:50 |
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gently caress the Mako Shark!
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 12:17 |
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How reflexes dependent is the game? I've heard everyone raving about it, but I have the reaction speed and agility of a dead fish, so I'd like to know that I'm not going to just suck at the game before I jump in.
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 13:48 |
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skeleton warrior posted:How reflexes dependent is the game? I've heard everyone raving about it, but I have the reaction speed and agility of a dead fish, so I'd like to know that I'm not going to just suck at the game before I jump in. The actual game is fine action wise I find, some sharks still get me now and then, but that's also me neglecting my 02 (your HP/diving resource). I'll be honest: the QTE with (some/most) of the harpoons in this game are the frustrating parts to me. Even worse if you are on mouse + keyboard. The steam thread complaining about it had 43 pages before it was locked. Big tip: increase the base harpoon strength to bypass the QTE "minigame" as much as possible. And get tranq guns, sleeping fish give the best quality too
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 14:46 |
Think I'm close to the end, so far I feel like the game is wide, but not very deep. Lots of content but the thing you'll be doing the most is grinding out the same few areas with little variety, and swimming circles around sharks waiting for the right time to shoot them. Game has great art and is dripping style, but has some flaws, I'd say maybe 7-8/10?
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 15:00 |
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I loved this game at the start but the deeper I got into the story I started to fall a little out of love with it, not that it's ruined the experience for me but the mechanics and minigames and that sort of thing keep coming throughout the entire game and some are worse/more annoying than others. I really enjoy the loop of catching fish and selling sushi to make money which allows me to buy better equipment to dive deeper to catch better fish to sell for more money, etc and every time the game forced me out of that loop I got kinda irked. There's some frustrating design choices like having to swim around the sea people village OR pay Bei to ride the manatee thing, the annoying forced stealth section that you have to go on immediately after getting on the boat with no way to quit/save until you've finished the whole section or having some quests force you to come back to the boat after finishing them with no way to know beforehand that it's about to happen. I am in chapter 6 now and I think pretty close to finishing the story and it sounds like there may be some postgame stuff that is more open ended so I'm looking forward to that. Fun game but I think the story overstays its welcome a bit and at this point I'm ready to wrap it up.
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 15:02 |
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It's an interesting game. I'm also on chapter 6 and I kind of agree with what was said above that your control gets jerked away a bit too often for the game to go off on a tangent. Those tangents are usually high effort but often not what I was really in the mood to get railroaded into. Add in a general mild disrespect of your time feeling with the gratuitous backtracking and the general slowness of pretty much everything in the sea people village. I guess I don't really understand why outlets gave it 9s and 10s but it's aight
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 16:48 |
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I got this during the summer sale and I am having so much fun. Just a chill atmosphere with fun exploration. My one complaint: narwhal roe
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 17:35 |
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if you described the individual elements of this game to me you'd think i'd dislike it, but they do everything just right (except maybe a little more grinding than suits some people i guess) i do think it could do with a few more swimming areas, but i'm probably not that close to the end, so maybe i'll get some
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 19:40 |
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Does fast travel beocme a thing at any point? I just had what I assume is a bug at 300' where a cutscene started, it ended and I had gone from ~115 to 40 and was at critical depth... so I died before I could get more oxygen and now I've lost 20 minutes of gameplay which half of the time was just going through all of the areas to get to this spot. The only complaint I have about this entire game is just how loving boring using UV light on worms is, and I assume once I finish this save the princess part it'll bless me with something so I don't need to anymore.
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 20:34 |
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If any of y'all want to trivialize the difficulty invest in the sleep dart rifle. 40% chance to make literally anything fall asleep.
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 22:38 |
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Does it work on bosses? Maybe I should give the game more credit, I saw that and assumed it would not work on things that actually mattered
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 22:42 |
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faantastic posted:Does fast travel beocme a thing at any point? I just had what I assume is a bug at 300' where a cutscene started, it ended and I had gone from ~115 to 40 and was at critical depth... so I died before I could get more oxygen and now I've lost 20 minutes of gameplay which half of the time was just going through all of the areas to get to this spot. The only complaint I have about this entire game is just how loving boring using UV light on worms is, and I assume once I finish this save the princess part it'll bless me with something so I don't need to anymore. Regarding fast travel: Once you reach the underwater village you'll unlock a mirror on your boat that lets you teleport there instantly. Also works to transport to the end zone once you've reached it Regarding the spoilered text: You get a charm later that lets you go through the worms without a light like the mermaids. Useful for a while but you stop needing to go through that area as much once you have fast travel, I ended up dropping it for more relevant perks
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 22:46 |
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No Mods No Masters posted:Does it work on bosses? Maybe I should give the game more credit, I saw that and assumed it would not work on things that actually mattered stuns minibosses, the two bosses I've fought yet were frankly easier than some of the sharks and adjacent critters lol Its top end damage will eventually be outclassed, I suspect, but even then it's a really great weapon for regular dives the second boss I didn't have the tranq rifle yet but turns out that lucking into two sets of proximity bombs is very, very funny
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 23:12 |
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The net gun is a good option for the same reason, and both the net gun and the sleep dart can be upgraded to let you net/sleep larger things like sharks and tuna. The real GOAT however is the red squeaky hammer because you just need to swim up to something and mash melee until it falls asleep then scoop it up. And it works with anything (except for boss-rear end bosses) Edit: Very late game spoilers: I just finished the section where you have to control Dave and Suwam at the same time and thought that was actually a pretty well done section. Some of this stuff lands but running from the pirates as Dr Bacon or swimming through the tunnel with the Beluga kinda sucks. The stealth section was meh too but laughed at the MGS references. At least they're all over pretty quickly. explosivo fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jul 11, 2023 |
# ? Jul 11, 2023 23:14 |
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Don't get me wrong, I agree most of the bosses are pretty straightforward, but the guy did say literally anything. So far nothing in the game I've seen has been in remotely the same ballpark of dangerousness as that one shark with a whip for a tail. Jesus christ
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 23:18 |
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all sharks are chumps with tranq rifle and drones. nighty-night idiot, have a nice trip
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 23:40 |
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Yeah sharks are free money.
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 23:50 |
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even if you have to kill the shark, stunning it lets you reposition and unload a couple more shots, each of which has a 40% chance of stunning it again
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 23:53 |
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poly and open-minded posted:I got this during the summer sale and I am having so much fun. Just a chill atmosphere with fun exploration. The Imp I knew would have no problems sourcing whale spunk.
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# ? Jul 11, 2023 23:55 |
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Roe has a very specific meaning!
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 00:18 |
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Ah yeah, most of the harpoon qtes suck. I wish they'd put in an option to skip them or something. The harpoon caps out on damage really early too. Still, I'm down to buy whatever dlc they make. I can always use more dave in my life.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 01:13 |
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drat, I just crafted the fully upgraded tranq dart and it is very much worth going for. Fish fall asleep immediately after getting hit and you can put sharks to sleep with two darts.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 03:27 |
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Making fish sleep is better than the highest tier net imo. More versatile.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 05:06 |
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I was really getting pissed off at this game but I finally pushed through the awful story missions, and once you finish you unlock some cool stuff that's more focused on fishing and running a restaurant. I'm glad for that but I wish they'd believed in (and expanded) the core gameplay a little more.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 05:19 |
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Adam Bowen posted:I wish they'd believed in (and expanded) the core gameplay a little more. same, i'm not done with them yet but they really seem like effort that should have gone into the core loop. some of them are cute and fun but they should have cut the 1/2 of them that are just half baked.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 05:22 |
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I like the distractions but I basically have 3 things going on per day for the last couple of days and it feels a bit much. I know part of that's on me for rushing the campaign, but one day of just chill fishing would be nice
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 05:41 |
explosivo posted:I loved this game at the start but the deeper I got into the story I started to fall a little out of love with it, not that it's ruined the experience for me but the mechanics and minigames and that sort of thing keep coming throughout the entire game and some are worse/more annoying than others. I really enjoy the loop of catching fish and selling sushi to make money which allows me to buy better equipment to dive deeper to catch better fish to sell for more money, etc and every time the game forced me out of that loop I got kinda irked. There's some frustrating design choices like having to swim around the sea people village OR pay Bei to ride the manatee thing, the annoying forced stealth section that you have to go on immediately after getting on the boat with no way to quit/save until you've finished the whole section or having some quests force you to come back to the boat after finishing them with no way to know beforehand that it's about to happen. I am in chapter 6 now and I think pretty close to finishing the story and it sounds like there may be some postgame stuff that is more open ended so I'm looking forward to that. Totally agree - the best parts of the game are very front-loaded, and the back half gets repetitive and frequently frustrating. I still got a good 25-30 hours out of it, but I’m ready to let it go. It’s starting to really lean in to dumb and poorly designed boss fights, the management sim scales poorly once you get to platinum tier, and the story isn’t going anywhere particularly interesting. That said - that first 10-15 hours were pure magic in terms of presentation and the next 10 were a very solid loop.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 11:53 |
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I got sucked in by the really nice pixel art, but I am really enjoying the gameplay loop. Sounds like I need to build the sleepygun looks like, I always like getting the toy hammer because it basically does the same thing.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 14:41 |
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This is a fantastic little (large) game. This is a steal for under 20 bucks.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 14:50 |
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'No, it's the environmentalists that are wrong' I say to myself as I scoop up seahorses with a net and shoot a grenade launcher at a shark
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 15:58 |
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Yeah the game's messaging is a bit muddled when you're fighting the bad guys who are I guess using the sea creatures to do.. bad things.. but I'm going around shooting every living creature I find including prehistoric dinosaur fish for monetary gain.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 16:03 |
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Alctel posted:'No, it's the environmentalists that are wrong' I say to myself as I scoop up seahorses with a net and shoot a grenade launcher at a shark I took the environmental stuff to be a direct parody of Paul Watson more than anything. Though, there's absolutely every reason for environmentalists to hate Cobras operation even if Dave sheds a tear over a sea turtle choking on a plastic bag right before bludgeoning a tuna to death because he's out of drones. Deki fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Jul 12, 2023 |
# ? Jul 12, 2023 16:47 |
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There's no way to save in between those scenes where you have access to your phone is there? I really like the gameplay loop but sometimes I'm just.planning for a quick dive or bout of restaurant management and don't really want to play a rhythm game in some nerd's dream.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 17:26 |
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McCoy Pauley posted:There's no way to save in between those scenes where you have access to your phone is there? I really like the gameplay loop but sometimes I'm just.planning for a quick dive or bout of restaurant management and don't really want to play a rhythm game in some nerd's dream. No, there's not, and there will be other times where that happens too. I think it auto saves so technically you might be able to bail out and come back at that point but I've never tested it.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 17:28 |
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McCoy Pauley posted:There's no way to save in between those scenes where you have access to your phone is there? I really like the gameplay loop but sometimes I'm just.planning for a quick dive or bout of restaurant management and don't really want to play a rhythm game in some nerd's dream. That's my greatest gripe. I had 15 minutes to kill the other day before hopping in a car for 4 hours. Came back up and got roped into some guitar hero bullshit mini game. WTF. Task manager end program.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 18:58 |
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As much as this gameplay doesn't need more overlapping content some sort of morality or ethic system actually would have worked for me. Getting bumps for "invasive" species (which by the way how does that work when other wildlife from all over the world just magically teleports there but aren't invasive somehow?) And breeding and releasing endangered wildlife. Catch too many vulnerable fish in a short period and get a big hit to your social media and even protests at the high end. Make the narwhal ridiculously expensive to sell but have it basically guarantee that a bunch of people will do a sit-in when you open for a while to deny you spaces. I'd rather have that as a mechanic than a tamagachi or fish wearing hats.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 20:25 |
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Eifert Posting posted:If any of y'all want to trivialize the difficulty invest in the sleep dart rifle. 40% chance to make literally anything fall asleep. Is that how it works? Maybe you can explain what the 3 dots that appear above the fish when you tranq them means ? Also I got my rear end kicked by the Great White Shark, so I figured I would come back once I upgraded my oxygen tank and weapons, but now it stopped raining. Did I miss my chance for revenge or does he come back eventually? Away all Goats fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jul 12, 2023 |
# ? Jul 12, 2023 20:38 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 12:42 |
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Away all Goats posted:Is that how it works? Maybe you can explain what the 3 dots that appear above the fish when you tranq them means ? Means they have been tranq'd but haven't fallen asleep yet. Usually takes a few seconds but bigger fish can't be put to sleep without the last dart gun upgrade, so if you're shooting a shark or big fish with it they'll get the three dots and they're slow but won't fall asleep. Also you'll get another chance for those bosses. Next time it rains they'll tell you about it.
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# ? Jul 12, 2023 20:46 |