Taking to Twitter, developer Mintrocket announced that Dave the Diver has now sold over 5 million units worldwide across all platforms. In January, it was announced that the game had hit 3 million units sold, so clearly it has maintained good momentum where sales are concerned.

Mintrocket has kept up a decent cadence of updates for Dave the Diver, which also included crossover DLC content featuring Dredge and Godzilla.

In our review of Dave the Diver, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “Dave the Diver is an improbably addictive game that stands out as one of the most unique and memorable experiences in a year full of great titles.” Read the full review through here.

Dave the Diver is available on PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Mintrocket has yet to confirm when (or if) the game will release for Xbox consoles.

#DavetheDiver over 5M copies sold✨
Thank you so much for all the love and support!

“Sleep tomorrow but tonight go diving 🎶!” pic.twitter.com/kzL2TW61J6

— DAVE THE DIVER (@DaveDiverGame) November 28, 2024

New dishes inspired by Godzilla (and Ebirah, a crustacean kaiju from 1966’s Ebirah, Horror of the Deep) are also available to cook. Players can also collect Godzilla figures in the ocean and witness a titanic clash between two kaiju. Those who want to engage with the new content should do it before November 23rd, 11:59 PM PST.

The free DLC will only be available up to that date. Despite the limited-time nature of the content (likely due to licensing costs), you can download it and play it even after the elapsed date. Furthermore, those who download it during this period can still reinstall it afterwards.

With Dave the Diver currently 25 percent off on PC via Steam, now is a good time. Check out our review for more details on the title.

Dave the Diver is about Dave, a professional diver brought in to catch fish from the mysterious Blue Hole. Though inherently a fishing game, players also manage a sushi restaurant by night, helping it gain popularity and even assisting in the cooking. PS5 players should take note, as it supports the DualSense’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.

Post-launch, the development team has added some new gameplay elements, from new species and mini-games to a crossover with Black Salt Games’ Dredge. Some new DLC focused on Godzilla is also in the works, launching in May free for all players.

Dave the Diver is currently available for PC and Nintendo Switch – check out our review for the latter here. It’s sold over three million copies since launching in June 2023.

That’s not all though, because more new content is also on the way for the acclaimed adventure game. Mintrocket has also announced a new Godzilla DLC, which will bring the terrifying King of the Monsters to the game, allowing players to dive into the depths of the Blue Hole to take it on. The DLC will arrive sometime in May, and it will be available to all players for free.

Dave the Diver is currently available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. It has sold over 3 million units as of earlier this month. Read our review of the game through here.

The game takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, and features classical sci-fi trappings. The core gameplay in Wakerunners will involve fast-paced close-quarters combat, with all playable characters featuring their own high-speed traversal and movement options, allowing them to glide in and out of combat at a moment’s notice.

Wakerunners will also be a unique MOBA in allowing players to swap between different characters in the middle of a match, with sets it apart from Dota 2 or League of Legends, where picking a character locks you in to playing that character for the entirety of the match.

The game is slated to get a playable demo during Steam Next Fest, which is set for February 5 to February 12. The demo will allow players to try out 7 of the game’s roster of playable characters, and players will be free to pick any character as long as it isn’t already being played by teammates or opponents.

https://youtu.be/50gRCUnYgRI

Taking to Twitter, Mintrocket recently announced that Dave the Diver has now sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Seeing as the game has only been out for less than six months, that’s quite an impressive accomplishment. The fact that it has received a few content updates following its release is also likely to have contributed to its success.

Back in July, the game was confirmed the have sold over 1 million units.

Dave the Diver launched for PC back in June, which was followed by a Nintendo Switch release in October. There’s been no official word yet on when we can expect the game to come to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

In our review of the game, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “Dave the Diver is an improbably addictive game that stands out as one of the most unique and memorable experiences in a year full of great titles.” Read the full review through here.

https://twitter.com/DaveDiverGame/status/1742460348568076617

The extent of the new content and whether Dredge will see anything from Dave the Diver is unknown. However, some aberrations include a hammerhead shark with demonic eyes, a translucent fish that can munch on Dave and much more. You’ll also explore from a unique perspective that channels Black Salt Games’ title, adding to the spookiness.

The free content update goes live on December 15th for Nintendo Switch and PC. Stay tuned for more details next week, and check out our review of Dave the Diver here. You can also read our review for Dredge, which is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch.

Gameplay in Nakwon: Last Paradise revolves around scouting and base management. Players can set off either solo or in teams of two to hunt down resources throughout the city. Players might find other groups out scavenging as well, and fights have the potential of breaking out. Players will also have to contend with environmental hazards, including zombies, that can either be avoided or fought.

Resources scavenged while out scouting can then be used to upgrade the player’s safe zone, where players will be able to sell resources for money. The money can in turn be used to acquire better privileges and benefits.

Mintrocket originally announced Nakwon: Last Paradise back in September, and is gearing up the release a pre-alpha playtest of the game soon.

Just as I would begin to think I had a hang of what the game’s structure and mechanics were, it would layer on something completely new and force me to readjust my rhythm. Hours upon hours into the game, it was pulling this same trick over and over until it should have been, by any reasonable metric, an unwieldy mist-mash of systems, mechanics, and mini games that simply should not work together. And yet, they do, and they come together to create a magically addictive and compelling loop.

"You play through the life of Dave, day by day, and each day is broken into multiple discrete chunks of time."

In case you, like me, somehow don’t understand what Dave the Diver is or why everyone who plays it starts raving about it, it’s a bizarre blend of RPG and adventure, with time management and minor action elements thrown in to boot. You play as Dave, who is a diver (shocking, I know), who gets in with a friend on opening a Sushi Restaurant near a mysterious water body called the Blue Hole. Initially, this simply entails helping run the place – diving into the Blue Hole to collect fish and ingredients, and then serving the finished dishes later in the day to customers at the restaurant. But then it rapidly escalates and goes in different directions entirely. Soon, you are helping catalog the local wildlife, recovering items lost at sea (or, uh, lake? Whatever the Blue Hole is), and even stumbling upon an ancient aquatic civilization. 

The already out there directions the story bounds off into are accentuated by a very colourful cast of characters. Pretty much every single person you meet is a memorable, colourful sort, exhibiting the exact right blend of over the top gimmickry and a tongue in cheek sense of self awareness. The frequent animated interludes are so obviously over the top given the context, and played up so much, it felt impossible to me to not be charmed. Every character feels interesting to interact with, and if there is one criticism I have, it is that sometimes I’d want to talk to them more than the game would let me.

In terms of gameplay, Dave the Diver is… well, hard to explain. You play through the life of Dave, day by day, and each day is broken into multiple discrete chunks of time. You spend the morning and afternoon diving, while you spend the evening working at the restaurant. These two lead to two very different gameplay loops. The former, which takes up the bulk of your time, involves you slowly descending into the Blue Hole’s depths in a sort of side scrolling action game format. In the depths, you have to not only collect ingredients for later the evening (whether it is by killing the marine life wantonly, or by gathering the more inert stuff), but also anything else the locals have asked for help with – whether it’s to collect certain specimens to help a grad student complete her research, or to save the local wildlife from would-be ne’er-do-wells, and many more other fun, contrived scenarios to get you to spend more time exploring when you dive.

"You play through the life of Dave, day by day, and each day is broken into multiple discrete chunks of time. You spend the morning and afternoon diving, while you spend the evening working at the restaurant. These two lead to two very different gameplay loops."

Exploration can feel serene. The Blue Hole changes layouts each time you go in (though important landmarks and the general layout seem to be the same across multiple runs), so you never quite know what to expect, but it can be fun just slowly watching the schools of fish swim by, as you slowly make your way to that outcropping of rock to nab yourself a starfish. However, you need to watch out for your oxygen (you can’t let it run out), your depth (your suit and gear needs to be upgraded to be able to go deeper), as well as the marine life that will also be hostile – whether they simply be poisonous sea urchins that hurt you if you unwisely try to pick them up, or something a lot scarier, like sharks.

You can defend yourself against a lot of these threats by using a knife for close ranged combat, or a gun for ranged combat. You also get a harpoon which you can aim and throw, and obviously, you can use all three weapons to also collect fish and marine life for the restaurant later in the day. You can equip different kinds of equipment to get better (or the more desired, at any rate) results. You can craft new gear for yourself entirely. You can upgrade your existing gear. And all of this is just the diving side of the game.

In the evenings, you help run a restaurant. This plays completely differently with almost zero mechanical overlap with the rest of the game (the overlap is narrative, structural, and thematic), and involves you first deciding on the menu for the day based on the ingredients you have, and then serving the customers as they come in, making sure to deliver the right people the right orders without taking too much time, while also keeping an eye on your ingredients and menu and making sure you are topping up the necessary stuff (wasabi) to keep the place open for as long as possible. 

You don’t have to cook, but you’re doing pretty much everything else – you set the dishes on the menu, you open the restaurant, you deliver people their orders, you take away the dirty dishes, and at the end of it all, you make a bunch of money that can then be used to upgrade your diving gear. Oh, after a while, there’s a social media feed where you can check what others think of your restaurant too. You see what I mean about the game having a ludicrous amount of systems, right?

"It sounds like a somewhat random mish-mash of mechanics thrown in together with the loosest possible contextualization, and truth be told, it kind of is that, but it works, and it works really well. It’s delightfully addictive and engrossing, and it is a game that is incredibly well suited to a portable like the Nintendo Switch"

It sounds like a somewhat random mish-mash of mechanics thrown in together with the loosest possible contextualization, and truth be told, it kind of is that, but it works, and it works really well. It’s delightfully addictive and engrossing, and it is a game that is incredibly well suited to a portable like the Nintendo Switch, with its gameplay neatly breaking down into discrete bite sized chunks that lend themselves very well to the Switch’s pick up and play nature. 

The actual conversion job for the Switch is well done too. The control mapping is logical and becomes second nature soon enough, the UI has been smartly rescaled for the Switch, and the game’s pixel-inspired graphic style translates extremely well to the Switch as well. There are portions of the game where it suffers some slowdown, particularly in more intense boss fights, or dives that have a lot more going on. These can sometimes create some frustrating situations – thankfully, these don’t happen very often, but I wish they never happened at all.

In a year full of great games, Dave the Diver is one that still manages to stand out. It was a big hit when its 1.0 version hit PC earlier this year, and it manages to remain a standout experience now that it has launched on the Switch as well. The best recommendation that I can give Dave the Diver is that, in a year as packed and full of great games as 2023 has been, I would still call special attention to it, and say that it stands out.

Go play it.

This game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

The Blue Hole constantly changes, so new items, marine life and other features appear with each dive (and as the story progresses). Ingredients are used in the sushi bar at night, as Dave decides the menu and helps wait on customers. Upon progressing through the game, new weapons, tools and options become available, and discoveries, like a long-lost aquatic civilization, come to light.

If that weren’t enough, some new content like Night-Diving, Crab Traps, Lobster Party, new sub-missions and much more have been added. Dave the Diver has crossed over one million players since release, so expect more content and updates over the coming months.