In past video game lives I've been a food truck burger flipper, ramen restaurant manager, and waiter on a spaceship, and now I'm putting on my sushi chef hat for Dave the Diver, an immaculately polished gem that first began life in Early Access where you plunder the deep seas and sling exotic fish for adventurous diners.
Within an hour of booting up Dave the Diver, I was struck by how much is going on in this surprisingly ambitious indie, and how thoughtfully it's all been incorporated. It's a deep-sea action-exploration game moonlighting as a restaurant management sim. At first I worried those very different gameplay experiences would clash, but instead they swim together like a pod of dolphins, making each other more meaningful and rewarding.
