Video Game / Dave the Diver

From Left to Right: Bancho, Dave, Cobra

Dave The Diver is a single player adventure RPG created by Mintrocket (a subsidiary of Nexon) featuring deep-sea exploration and fishing during the day and sushi restaurant management at night. The game was originally an early access game that got fully released on Steam on June 28, 2023 and the Nintendo Switch on October 26, 2023.

Dave is a lovable, but gullible diver who gets interrupted in the middle of his vacation by his friend Cobra with the promise of the best-tasting sushi around. As it's his favourite food in the world, Dave couldn't help himself but fly down as fast as possible, only to be hit with the surprising news that not only was he tricked into working in a newly opened sushi restaurant (run by the eccentric sushi chef Bancho), but also to supply all the ingredients!

What starts as a simple job of catching fish turns into an underwater adventure of epic proportions as Dave has to contend with dangerous deep sea creatures, rival divers, and even an underwater society of sea people!

During the Game Awards 2023, a crossover collaboration DLC between Dave the Diver and DREDGE was announced, which was released on December 15, 2023. In January 2024, a crossover DLC with Godzilla was announced for May.

A manga based on the game illustrated by Shinnosuke Tsuchida began serialization in the September 2023 issue of Monthly CoroCoro Comic.

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Tropes used in Dave The Diver:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • Rice in real life can take months to grow and then harvest. Otto fully admits this and indulges in a little Breaking the Fourth Wall to lampshade how the rice grown on the farm only takes a few days.
    Otto: It takes about a year in the real world to grow rice, but this is no rice farming game, is it?
  • Dave can dive to far deeper depths than are possible for a real diver, especially for someone as obese as he is, and then ascend to the surface immediately using only compressed air and a wetsuit. Scuba diving to deep depths in real life requires special equipment such as different gas mixes, pressurized suits and ascending to the surface in slow stages to remove nitrogen gas from the body and prevent decompression sickness. The deepest dive using an open circuit scuba on record is 332.35m, the diver spent a decade planning and preparing for the dive, supported by a 30-man team, spending 15 minutes at that depth and then took 13 hours and 35 minutes to ascend. Diving in enclosed spaces and cold environments such as in caves and under glaciers is also extremely dangerous and should only be done with years of training, specialized equipment and a large support team.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: The fight against the Giant Gadon has it chase Dave down current-filled hallways, while Dave needs to avoid ice shard obstacles in his path.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The third boss fight with John Watson is interrupted when a Kronosaurus breaks through the rocks and smashes Watson's submarine. Dave then has to fight the Kronosaurus.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • A third of the game in, there is a dream sequence where you're Duff imagining being at a hololive expy concert where he's participating in a dance dance revolution like minigame.
  • Midway through the game, you play as a drunk Dr. Bacon who randomly stumbles upon ancient ruins which details the dreadful past of the Sea People, then he has to get away from pirates.
  • The Hydrothermal Vents arc has you swapping between Dave and Suwam as they co-operate in a puzzle-filled area, with the last stretch having you control both at the same time.
• An Entrepreneur Is You: Aside from supplying Bancho Sushi with ingredients, Dave also has to take up the role of restaurant manager and waiter. This means that he's in charge of setting the menu, hiring staff and ensuring that the business rises up in prominence via social media. Later on, Bancho Sushi opens a branch restaurant that Dave also has to staff and supply.
• Animal Nemesis: The quest to hunt down Klaus is instigated by an old woman named Clara, who's been hunting down Klaus for years for killing her husband. She shows up at the end of the fight, finishing off Klaus in a single punch.
• Animals Not to Scale: Several of the boss battles are against creatures that are far bigger than their real life counterparts. A few examples are the Wolf Eel, Mantis Shrimp, Truck Hermit Crab, and Yawie, an Anomalocaris.
• Animal Wrongs Group: The oceanic protection group Sea Blue is a textbook example. Not only are they implied to be paid off to not direct their activism toward large corporations which actually contribute to overfishing and pollution, instead bullying and harassing small businesses like Dave and Bancho, but they're revealed to be Straw Hypocrites who kill and sell dolphins on the down-low. Not to mention they have military-grade equipment which makes them seem more like terrorists than activists.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Whenever you're in the Sea People Village or certain locations where they live, your oxygen meter won't tick down.
  • Partway through the game, Dave gains access to a fish farm that allows him to breed any fish that he's obtained eggs from. This can allow him a steady access of otherwise difficult to catch fish such as Tuna or Sharks.
  • If a party is taking place the night Bancho Sushi closes after defeating the Giant Squid, the party will be moved to the next day.
  • Fights against the Marinca Superbosses won't end a night dive, so you can continue to fish after beating them without losing any oxygen overall.
  • Fights against all bosses don't end the dive upon death, usually respawning Dave at either the start of the fight or at a choke point. The same goes for certain missions, where getting killed allows Dave to respawn at the start of the area.
  • After defeating a Fishomon, it's treated like a small/regular size fish by your inventory so you can carry it with you rather than use up a Drone call like with large fish, which is notable with the first Fishomon being a variant of the Parrotfish which normally needs a Drone to bring it home alive. Udo will also interrupt gameplay once the Fishomon is knocked out to avoid accidentally killing it.
  • There's an automatic button press option where you can hold the respective button in Button Mashing segments to fill the meter at a fixed rate. ^note  Doing it manually is still more effective though.
  • Normally you can sell just about anything to Cobra's Shop including weapons, but unique items like Boss Parts and weapons crafted with them will be barred from sale to avoid losing them forever.
  • The aberrated fish dishes can only be sold to the hooded figures and all of the fish in stock will go bad the next day, so the Travelling Merchant offers to buy the entire stock once the day is over.
  • If you swap your own gun for one you find while exploring your original gun will be returned to you once you end the dive (even if you disassembled it for fragments after swapping).
• Art Evolution: The DREDGE DLC has the aberrated fish from that game brought into full motion as opposed to being still images for the Monster Compendium, which is unfortunate for Dave as they're out to kill him.
• Attack Drone: Dr. Bacon and Duff develop one of these in order to help Dave reach the Divine Tree Control Room which starts as a simple support drone with a laser cutter, but when facing the Yawie, Duff flips the switch on its Attack mode which turns it into a powerful weapon for Dave which includes bullets, the powerful Stella Laser and time-manipulation.
• Attack the Tail: The giant Wolf Eel boss' weak spot is the glowing tip of its tail, which it exposes after a round of its three attacks. It does take damage from being shot in the other parts, but hitting the tail deals more damage.
• Atrocious Arthropods: Most arthropods that show up in the game, from spider crabs to sea scorpions, are hostile and will attack Dave if he gets too close. The Final Boss is a Kaiju-sized Anomalocaris named Yawie, who had menaced the Sea People in millennia past and threatens their civilization again by feeding on the roots of their sacred tree, weakening it while also causing other berserk megafauna to appear in the area and causing the recurring earthquakes that plague the region.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The lethal weapons (including the late game Death variants) are this outside of fighting bosses since you'll get less meat from any catches, meaning you're better off using the Tranquilizer and Net guns if you're gearing for ingredient gathering.
  • In-Universe with the giant squid chunk Dave gets after fighting it, after Bancho observes that it reeks of ammonium chloride and won't be easy to sell as a dish, so the most he can do is prepare it for a private party.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The laptop Duff uses on the Weapon Upgrade menu is a "Manbook Pro".
  • Dave's phone calculator is a "DASIO" brand rather than "CASIO".
• Boring, but Practical: The basic Rifle guns shoot a single shot at a time which seems a bit underwhelming compared to the other guns, but they hold lots of ammo and deal a good amount of damage with each shot. The Tranquilizer Rifle for example makes a good gun for the early part until you get the Modified Tranquilizer Dart since it can put fish to sleep instantly or deal solid damage otherwise.
• Boss Bonanza: The final stretch of the game is essentially two boss fights and then a two-day downtime period before another boss fight. After defeating the Heliocoprion you're essentially immediately launched into a battle against John Watson and the Kronosaurus, and then it's just a bit of puzzling away from the confrontation with the Final Boss.
• Boss Subtitles: Each boss gets one to introduce them to the player, usually coupled with them releasing a Mighty Roar.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • Beating Lusca and completing the Marinca collection only gets you two unique new decorations for Bancho Sushi and Cobra's boat and two boss dishes you can serve for later. These would be normal rewards in the middle of the game, but completing the Marinca is meant to be a postgame activity and one of the absolute last things you do in the game.
  • Fully ranking up your Ecowatcher level grants you a charm which increases your carry weight by 30 kilograms. By the time you unlock it, you'll probably have leveled up your storage box so high that you almost never have to worry about going over your equip load.
• Breakable Weapons: You can't take any weapon you find underwater since it's stated that they break upon surfacing but collecting them enough will grant you the option of crafting and upgrading them with scrap from the ocean floor.
• The Cameo: Duff is a major fan of the Visual Novel game Master of Eternity (treated as an anime going under its original release name of Stra Stella), particularly the character Leahs. Leahs also stars in a side game unlocked after Duff's Dream Sequence of seeing her and the other Master of Eternity characters in an idol concert.
• Cassandra Truth: One Cooksta post featuring Waptia Fieldensis has the poster a bit skeptical about its claims that it uses real prehistoric creatures, even though it's technically true since Dave caught them alive from the Hydrothermal Vents.
• Cast From Hitpoints: Since Oxygen serves as Dave's health while underwater, swimming faster will cause the oxygen to drain faster.
• Chain Lightning: The Lightning-elemental weapons will shoot lightning that hops from the main target to other fishes, doing less damage with each hop.
• Company Cameo: The dream sequence after the ending has Dave dream of flying into space in a mint-coloured rocket similar to the Mintrocket logo.
• Cooking Duel: In the second half of the game, Vincent Yamaoka returns with other celebrity chefs as part of his second program "Challenge the Chef", where Bancho must put his skills to the test in a number of non-sushi related cooking challenges. Players take control of Bancho and must prepare the ingredients via a number of Quick Time Events, and victory unlocks a number of different upgrade to Bancho Sushi (such as a cocktail mixer and the branch restaurant).
• Continuing is Painful: If you die on most diving expeditions, you're sent back to Cobra's boat with only one of the fish or items you managed to acquire, which can be pretty devastating depending on how big your haul was. This is averted on certain missions or during boss fights, where you're given an option to retry and respawn at a checkpoint in the mission/fight.
• David Versus Goliath: Every boss fight has Dave fight an enemy that's far bigger than him, with the only exceptions being the first two John Watson fights.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you die during boss fights or certain missions, the game gives an option to retry which respawns you at a checkpoint with full oxygen to boot. This does not apply to basic diving expeditions, where you don't get any retry option and lose all but one of your items if you die.
• Death World: The red fog evening diving sessions hunting for aberrated fish become this in the DREDGE DLC, where every single fish you come across is hostile.
• Demo Bonus: The progress from the demo can be carried to the full game.
• Developer's Foresight: If Otto's farm tutorial takes place on a rainy day, he'll comment that it's redundant to water the plants, but shows you how to use the watering can anyway.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Kronosaurus isn't a dinosaur, but it is a giant prehistoric reptile who breathes fire. Pushed further with the final boss, Yawie, a giant anomalocaris who lives in lava and also breathes fire!
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • The Tranquilizer Rifle is easily obtainable by the early-to-mid-game, and since it provides a flat 40 percent chance to tranquilize its target no matter what^note unlike Hush Darts, which offer a guaranteed tranquilize but take a few seconds to work and don't work on larger fish until you get the last possible upgrade for them, it means you can suddenly start getting huge payouts from larger fish by capturing them at a high grade (and potentially breeding more of them with their eggs at the Fish Farm) much earlier than you're supposed to.
  • The Sleepy Toy Hammer offers a similar benefit, namely a semi-low guaranteed tranquilize chance if you're willing to contend with trying to melee hit a shark repeatedly until it falls asleep. Getting really lucky with it and managing to tranquilize a dangerous fish before it can even react can be an incredibly easy money-making exploit.
• Easter Egg: Literally if you type in "EASTEREGG" as a reward code to the Operator, which fittingly gifts you a weathervane for the chicken coop.
• Ecocidal Antagonist: Sea Blue initially presents itself as an overzealous Animal Wrongs Group, that goes after small-time fishers for the sake of protecting the ocean, but as people notice the hypocrisy behind their actions, and ignoring the destructive actions of big fishing corporations, it eventually gets revealed to not actually care about the environment, and their creed being a front for eliminating competition for a bigger, unethical fishery that desires to fish as much as they want in spite of ethics, and Sea Blue's leader, John Watson, is notably destructive in his boss battle where he blows up part of the environment nearby trying to kill Dave, and of course, John blames Dave for the destruction.
• Eco-Terrorist: Sea Blue is an "environmental protection group" that begins harassing Dave as he continues his diving. According to Cobra, Sea Blue is notorious for using violence against those they deem threatening to the environment, though he says they usually target small or independent operations like Dave's rather than the MegaCorp fisheries that do the real damage to the ocean. Their leader John Watson is an unhinged man who considers attacking Dave with a Mini-Mecha and grenade launchers (and blaming Dave for the collateral damage) to be a perfect way to protect the environment, and Sea Blue is shown to front a massive dolphin-hunting operation near the Blue Hole that Dave ends up infiltrating.
• Eldritch Location: The Blue Hole is a giant inexplicable phenomenon where aquatic wildlife from different ecosystems show up and live comfortably while giant sea creatures roam about, which is only the most ordinary part. There's also a Tibetian-like culture of Sea People living at the very bottom, a neighboring glacial area with hydrothermal vents where literal prehistoric creatures are thriving and the DLC adds Abberated Fish and Godzilla alongside other Kaiju to the mix. As the final capstone, the geography and wildlife mix changes every time Dave jumps in the water, and anything man-made that Dave didn't bring with him will crumble to pieces when he gets back on his boat.
• Electric Jellyfish: While some species of jellies are correctly poisonous, some species are electric, unlike in real life. There's even a type of jellyfish, the Blood-Belly Comb, that's explosive.
• Elemental Weapon: Out of 8 gun types, 5 of them can be upgraded with elemental powers, giving them added effects. Dave can also find elemental harpoon tips in boxes while diving.
  • the normal weapons deals high damage with no additional effects. However, the final upgrades of some guns have a chance to One-Hit Kill the target.
  • Fire weapons does less base damage than the normal variants, but does additional fire-elememtal damage.
  • Poison weapons does less base damage, but inflicts Damage Over Time to the target, which can add up to a significant number.
  • Tranquilizing weapons have a chance to make the target fall asleep, stopping them from moving and letting Dave capture them alive. This is also the only element that can be found on the Hush Dart line.
  • The Shock and Awe weapons come in two variants. The Lightning weapons does less damage but can hit multiple targets with Chain Lightning, while the Shock weapons has a chance to inflict Shock on the target. The final upgrade combines both variants into one.
  • The Grenade Launcher has a unique gravity-based upgrade. When the grenade hits, it creates a small black hole that sucks in nearby fish before exploding.
  • The Ice Gun line has freezing effects that cannot be found on other guns. It does no damage, but each shot gradually freezes the target.
• Elite Mook: The various sharks, as well as some other marine life like Marlin/Sailfish and Narwhals. They're larger than most other fish and have a lot more HP. While other aggressive fish simply chase and try to damage you with Collision Damage, they have actual attacks like lunges and charges.
• Emergency Weapon: You always start with the Dive Knife as a standard melee weapon. It's fairly weak with a short range, meaning you will probably want to replace it as soon as you can. However, late in the game you get the chance to upgrade it to boost its offensive power as well as being able to mine the previously pickaxe-exclusive minerals with it, making it far more useful.
• Face of a Thug: The hooded figures in the DREDGE DLC who show up at Bancho Sushi certainly look imposing for the eerie red fog setting and never leave until closing time, but are just as polite as the regular clientele and are the only customers willing to pay for and eat the aberrated fish dishes.
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: The Divine Tree is a massive tree that grows underwater. Its fruits glow, produce warmth, can be used to power the Lost Technology of the ancient Sea People, and can also be used as a Super Serum for Sea People, though that eventually turns them crazy. They're unfortunately toxic to humans, something that the ancient Sea People learned the hard way.
• Fantastic Light Source: The fruit of the Divine Tree can be used as a light source and source of warmth.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Many elements of the Sea People are based on Tibetan culture, such as their distinctive clothing, prayer flags, and momo dumplings. Which makes sense, since the Sea People village is a bit like Tibet except upside down.
• Farm Life Sim: Midway through the game, Dave gains access to a farm where he can grow some high-quality rice for unique dishes. Later on he's able to grow vegetables as well as get a chicken coop to supply some eggs.
• First Contact Faux Pas: Dr. Bacon finds some old Sea People murals that show what happened the first time the Sea People contacted humans- in an effort to be friendly, the Sea People offered some of their Divine Tree fruit to the humans, only to learn that it's toxic to humans. The humans took this the wrong way and attacked the Sea People, forcing them to retreat back to their village and never contact humanity again until Dave helps Ramo and Suwam.
• Fictional Social Network: Cooksta, which is effectively a combination of Instagram and the Michelin Guide. Aside from being able to view posts from various characters about the restaurant you also have to gain enough likes on it so that Bancho Sushi will get various tiered rewards that unlock new things for the restaurant.
• Food Porn: If you don't develop a craving for seafood sometime while playing this game, you probably didn't like seafood that much to begin with. Not only are there dozens upon dozens of lavishly-illustrated pixel art sushi dishes, but most of the posts customers make on Cooksta involve pictures of various dishes served at Bancho Sushi in much better detail then you'd normally see in setting up the menu, and there's a unique post for almost every single dish you can make.
• Foreshadowing: When the main characters first meet Maki, her food request is White Trevally Kombu Ochazuke. Bancho will mention that this is a weird request because ochazuke^note A Japanese dish made from pouring hot tea over cooked rice is generally a dish old men eat. She later reveals that she ordered this because it's her father's favorite dish.
• Freeze Ray: The Ice Gun shoots projectiles that deal no damage but gradually freeze the target. Once the target is completely frozen, the next attack it takes deal a lrage amount of additional damage.
• Friendly, Playful Dolphin: An early series of quest involves helping a friendly dolphin out by rescuing its mate and protecting it from pirates.
• Game-Breaking Bug: A serious one can randomly occur when opening your inventory on a dive run where your controls don't work and softlocks the game, forcing you to reload your save.
• Gameplay Roulette: In top of the core fishing-and-exploration gameplay, there are tons of minigames, digressions, singular unique gameplay sequences and even entire levels which have entirely exclusive mechanics. Special note should go to the Stealth-Based Mission where Dave has to infiltrate Sea Blue's hideout and The Final Boss being an Unexpected Shmup Level.
• Giant Enemy Crab: One Optional Boss is a giant hermit crab using an old mining truck as its shell.
• Giant Squid: The first boss that Dave fights is a giant squid so he can recover a collectible figurine for Duff named Leahs-chan.
• Global Currency Exception: The Sea People village use their own unique currency "Bei" that can be gained via completing quests as well as beating minigames or selling treasures.
• Go for the Eye: A number of bosses are vulnerable in the eyes:
  • The Giant Squid's weakspot is its eye. It's initially open to attack, but once it Turns Red it will actively cover it with a tentacle, only moving it to attack and expose itself if Dave gets into close range.
  • The Truck Hermit Crab can't be damaged normally, but you can shoot its eyes to force it into retracting and temporarily stop it from attacking.
  • The Mantis Shrimp's only vulnerable spot is its eyes, but it will often use its boxing glove-like forelegs to cover them. Dave needs to wait for the right moment after it strikes, or get it to stun itself on the metal weight in order to leave it open.
• Grenade Launcher: One of the gun types Dave can use. Unlike other guns' projectiles, the grenades move slower and are affected by gravity, making it harder to aim. In exchange, it does high damage in an area of effect.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Some of the more obscure normal fish throw players. One common culprit is the Atlantic Bonito, which doesn't really look much like its silhouette in Marinca and don't spawn particularly often. Players often don't notice they're missing it until they come to a party where a dish using it would be good party food. They are small, silvery fish, often found near the delivery ship's wreck usually accompanied by the somewhat easy to spot but small Bluehead Tilefish for their blue and yellow hues.
  • During the giant Gadon fight, there's a button prompt that looks like a half moon. This prompt is used nowhere else in the game (except sometimes after dodging a shark attack for optional, additional damage) and comes at an intense moment. And in difference to that point (where "failing" or not getting it just results in you not doing any damage to the shark), in this case, you die. Several players were baffled by this one, to judge by the Steam comments. It's a cursor-type prompt where there's a white spot showing where to guide the moon-shaped cursor (usually where it's a point of interest like a Divine Fruit or above the shark) which turns into a button prompt when guided successfully.
  • The game never quite mentions some of the deeper mechanics of staff management, like how to dispatch them to collect ingredients, how to train them to unlock new skills (and how to view their final stats and skills when hiring them) and what skills are important in a branch manager (serving and cooking).
  • Menu management is a key factor depending on how many customers come into restaurant, which is dependent on Bancho's ranking on Cooksta and/or if Dave did a night dive. Make too much of a dish, the player is basically throwing away ingredients. The auto-supply mechanic is where players can set just 1 of a dish on the menu so you're not wasting ingredients, and turning on Auto-supply means that Bancho and the cooking staff will automatically make the dish when requested. It's not quite explained, and many streamers had to be told by their live-chat commentators about it.
• Guns Firing Underwater: Not just regular guns, but even stuff like grenade launchers.
• Hidden Elf Village: Dave is told by an archeologist that the Blue Hole contains evidence of a vast and ancient Sea People race. Not only do they still exist, but they like to have Seahorse races which Dave can participate in.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Itsuki is a hireable staff member who is transparently a ninja and describes herself as such, as she didn't make a lot of money as one and that's why she's working at a sushi restaurant.
• Hopeless with Tech: Bancho, specifically with smartphones and social media. Every time he makes a post on Cooksta, it's always dull and to the point. And whenever he takes a picture, it's either blurry or has his hands/shadow in the way.
• Inescapable Net: Zig-zagged: Nets can be used to catch any non-predatory fish at a high grade, but some larger fish will need a Steel Net to be captured inside it without immediately tearing the net to shreds and larger predatory fish (like certain species of sharks) will just chomp through a net no matter what, instead having to be tranquilized to capture them.
• In My Language, That Sounds Like...: When Dave is first able to communicate with Suwam, Suwam makes note of the fact that "Dave" sounds like "broken toilet lid" in the Sea People language.
• Jack of All Stats: Raul's stats are all identical and his skills benefit him as a chef and server, making him good in both fields as well as procuring ingredients.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Some enemies, like crabs, are immune to basic bullets and harpoon shots. To catch them, you need to use a Net Gun or drop a rock on their head.
• Life Drain: The Gazing Shark in the DREDGE DLC has this as an ability, much like its original description in the Encyclopedia. Dave can later get a gun directly using this ability for himself.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: The friendly Sea People and the hostile Gadon are two merfolk types that Dave encounters. The Sea People live in a brightly-lit village can emit magic light that causes tubeworms to retract, and their mirror that teleports Dave to their village only works in the day. The Gadon on the other hand reside in very dark places, are repelled from the Sea People's village due to its brightness, and are Blinded by the Light emitted by a struck Divine Tree Fruit.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Tuna are not only incredibly agile but exceptionally bulky, requiring a lot of firepower in order to properly capture. As such, unless you have a grenade launcher or a Net Trap/fully-upgraded Net Launcher prepared they're among the most frustrating fish to capture.
  • Several of the Sharks (as well as the Narwhal) can not only soak up and deal a lot of damage but are also incredibly agile, attacking with quick lunges.
• Living Dinosaurs:
  • One of the hireable NPCs is named Raptor, whose hiring photo shows that he's a person with the head of a theropod dinosaur. Subverted if you look closely — the dinosaur head is just a mask, and he's constantly adjusting it when he's off the clock.
  • Several prehistoric animals can be found in the depths, including Dunkleosteus, Kronosaurus, and Anomalocaris — with it being theorized that they survived to modern times by being frozen in ice before thawing out.
• Made of Iron:
  • Dave himself can survive attacks from massive sea creatures so long as he has oxygen, which also doubles as his Life Meter.
  • The dolphin-hunting Ruthless Modern Pirates attack Dave underwater at one point, and they can take a fair bit of punishment from Dave's weaponry before getting knocked out despite being humans. Even after that, they still manage to regain consciousness and hightail it out of there.
• Magic Mirror: After gaining the trust of the Sea People, Dave is gifted a magical solar-powered mirror which acts as a portal from his boat to the village and it's set to only work with his face. Once you unlock the Glacial Region, the mirror connects to that as well as other mirrors in the area which act like the Escape Pod.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Itsuki, one of the early staff members you can hire to work at Bancho's sushi, starts out as the worst employee with just ONE point in all of her stats. But level her up to the max and she ends up having the 2nd best Server and Appeal scores in the entire game.
  • The Hush Dart and Net Gun lets you disable fish without damaging them so they can be captured with three stars quality. However, they only work on small-to-medium size fish, limiting their usefulness. But their final upgrades greatly increases their usefulness. The Modified Hush Dart almost instantly sedates any small fish with one shot and can sedate any large ones in a few seconds with two shots. The Steel Net Gun can capture anything except the largest sharks. And unlike the sleep status, fish caught in nets is permanent until you leave the area.
• Masked Luchador: El Nino is a hireable staff member wearing a luchdor mask who likes to show off his skills serving customers.
• Mermaid Arc Emergence: Despite the number of merfolk in the cast, the only example of this comes from one of Duff's cutscenes.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Lampshaded as part of the premise of the game: the Great Blue Hole is a weird place where species that would never generally meet each other gather, somehow.
• Missing Secret: The Fish Farm has 9 areas to raise fish for sale or food, yet only 7 of them are used by the Playable Epilogue, leaving two empty and locked.
• Monster Compendium: "Marinca" is an an in-universe app that acts like a Collectible Card Game which tracks whatever sea creatures Dave has captured/defeated over the course of the game.
• Monster Whale: Narwhals are the only cetaceans that can be hunted for the sushi bar, and it's justified by them being aggressive, as opposed to every other cetacean in the game. They're treated as a type of shark by the game mechanics, up to and including laying shark eggs up until an update changed their egg equivalent to a baby narwhal.
• Multi-Ranged Master: Dave wields a harpoon and one of several types of guns. Harpoons are weaker and have shorter range, but can catch fish with medium quality and have unlimited uses. Guns in general are stronger, but small fishes killed with guns yield low quality meat and guns have limited ammo.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Bancho manages to take otherwise completely ordinary seafood prep and turn it into the most badass, Animesque thing ever. Each time you research new recipes or enhance the flavor of an existing dish, you're treated to an over-the-top cutscene of Bancho preparing food, and it is awesome every time.
• Mundane Utility: The mystical Divine Fruit is capable of many things such as being the equivalent of the Sun for the Sea People and powering laser cannons. Mima uses them in her kitchen's furnace to make the best steamed food around.
• Mythology Gag: The DREDGE DLC features several references to its source:
  • The Hooded Figures and ability to explore for Aberrant Fish only appear on nights with Red Fog, just like the sinister red fog that only appears at nighttime and rapidly increases the Panic meter if you get too close to it.
  • The Travelling Merchant is literally just the same character from DREDGE, and her talking sprite even replicates her iconic "grasping her coveralls" pose from her artwork in that game.
  • The DLC adds yet another Unexpected Gameplay Change in the form of being able to directly control Cobra's boat to explore the area around the Blue Hole. The boat exploration is a replica of the main gameplay, down to the wheel-shaped dredging minigame. It's not quite the same as in DREDGE, as you're entirely perfectly safe the whole time.
  • The Travelling Merchant gifts Dave a lamp called the "Sky Fire" so he can explore the fog, which is identical to the Flame of the Sky lamp acquired at the Ancient Lighthouse in Devil's Spine.
  • Diving into the aberrated waters has several shipwrecks identical to the boats used in the Grey Isles and crab pots strewn around in the background.
  • The Hooded Figures who buy Aberrant Sushi from Bancho are all colored after the various different-colored Hooded Figures that give out Fetch Quests for various fish in the base game (blue, gold, purple and red)^note Sans the Figure in White, likely since they're a part of The Pale Reach DLC. They even messily devour their food with their bare hands in ways very evocative of how the narration describes what they do to the fish you bring them.
  • Upgrading the Drain Gun requires Machine Parts, which are Research Parts.
• Net Gun: A possible weapon for Dave to equip for fish catching, which gathers lots of fish in the area of effect and will be high quality since they were caught alive. The Steel Net Gun is the strongest tier which allows you to catch large fish for the Salvage Drone.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Played-with. Sea People dumplings need to be modified in order for humans to be able to eat them. A subversion is the Divine Tree Fruit — while they turned out to be lethal for humans to consume, they're also not good for Sea People to be infused with, eventually turning those infused into the Gadon.
• Orgasmically Delicious: Whenever you feed a VIP their requested dish, you're treated to a cutscene of them having what could be described as a religious experience.
• One-Hit KO: Weapons that induce sleep (hush darts, tranquilizer guns, the squeaky toy hammer) will knock out target fish and allow Dave to catch them without much of a struggle while also yielding the highest quality meat. When paired with the Recovery Drone, sleep weapons make really tough fish like sharks or marlin incredibly easy to harvest. The late-game "Death Rifle" variants play this straight where they have a chance killing a non-boss enemy outright.
• Our Mermaids Are Different:
  • The Sea People are a hidden society of merfolk that Dave ends up coming into contact with. They're initially hostile towards humans due to some ancient bad blood, but slowly warm up to Dave after he helps them out.
  • The Gadon are mutated ancient Sea People and are much less friendly, being immune to weaponry and will instantly kill Dave if they spot and catch him. Dave needs to hide from them in a Stealth-Based Mission, and later there's even a giant one that tries to chase him down. Fortunately, their eyes are light-sensitive and they will be Blinded by the Light from a Divine Tree fruit.
• Perilous Prehistoric Seas: The final zones are populated by prehistoric sea creatures, more than a few of which happen to be incredibly hostile. Nonetheless, they also happen to make for great sushi.
• Permanently Missable Content: There is one type of seafood which can be permanently missed if ignored during the story: The Anomalocaris birthed by Yawie in the rooms leading up to the Divine Tree Control Room. Since they shatter upon death if hit with a regular weapon and never respawn during the epilogue, the only way to catch them alive is by using a Steel Net Gun or Trap. Dave wonders if you can actually eat them if you do, which he turns out to be correct as they make up a Max Level menu item which returns a good amount of money for simple sushi. A later update would add a Crab Trap location to the Control room, allowing you to catch them for Marinca completion.
• Playable Epilogue: After solving the crisis causing the earthquakes, Dave is free to take it easy and keep managing Bancho Sushi as the game shifts over to more of a sandbox.
• Protagonist Title: The game's protagonist is, shockingly, a diver by the name of Dave.
• Press X to Not Die: There are several fish, such as Marlins, which have unique high-damage thrusting attacks requiring a quick button press to avoid. Also, the fight against the Giant Gadon primarily consists of these as Dave desperately tries to escape its onslaught.
• Psycho Serum: Infusion of the Divine Tree Fruit initially granted the ancient Sea People superhuman strength to perform jobs much more efficiently, however, it soon turned them into the twisted and insanely violent Gadon.
• Roar Before Beating: The bosses all give dramatic roars right before engaging the fight.
• Rock Beats Laser:
  • The Gadon are completely immune to any weaponry that Dave can get, even grenade launchers. The Giant Gadon is done in by a much more primitive method — having collapsing rubble from a tunnel crush it.
  • John Watson uses the most powerful high-tech weaponry for his "cause" and solely to kill Dave with, except he loses to someone with simple tools and even gets eaten by a prehistoric Kronosaurus.
• Ruthless Modern Pirates: Dave ends up fighting some of these in an early sidequest where they're attempting to hunt a dolphin. They show up later to attack Dr. Bacon when he is exploring some Sea People ruins, leading to a speedboat chase.
• Save Scumming: Once you enter the Sea People village, the game autosaves which can be used as a checkpoint in case you die and simply reload the autosave file to start from there rather than risk all but one of your loot.
• Sea Monster: Giant sharks, giant fish, giant hermit crabs and many more that Dave has to contend with.
• Sequel Hook: After the credits, Cobra is shown on the phone with someone before hearing a mysterious explosion coming from the Blue Hole.
• Serious Business:
  • Sushi, according to Bancho. Even something as simple as improving a recipe is treated with the gravitas of a master samurai in an epic fight for his life.
  • Whenever Duff builds or upgrades a weapon it takes the form of a J-Pop montage as he crafts a new weapon for the sake of fish murder.
• Shop Fodder: There are plenty of things to sell to Cobra's Shop, primarily the Silver Bowls and fossils. The Workshop in the Sea People Village pays the most Bei for Jade items.
• Shout-Out: Tons.
  • The "Gyao!" minigame is transparently a riff on Tamagotchi with identical mechanics.
  • The main way of tracking what fish Dave has caught over the course of the game is Marinca, an app themed around a collectable card game. The character who introduces it to you is named Sato, and visually resembles a middle-aged Ash Ketchum.
  • A midgame-and-beyond sidequest where Dave captures rare, monstrous variants on fish for a local magazine to feature is named Fishmon. To really seal the deal, the codex for captured fishmon is captioned "Gotta Fish 'Em All!"
  • One boss fight has John Watson piloting a suit of Powered Armor, which has the model number "RX-93".
  • Otto tearfully mentions taking a harpoon to the knee a few times, referring to a memetic line from Skyrim.
  • Cobra drops a Metal Gear Solid reference when Dave suits up to infiltrate Sea Blue, calling their base Dark Moses Island, a riff on Shadow Moses Island from Metal Gear Solid. The fact that he doesn't quite say Shadow Moses Island may be a translation issue or may be writing around copyright. The Game Over screen if Dave gets caught is almost identical to that of the Metal Gear Solid games, and he even finds and consume a Ration, which drops both his health and psych bars because it wasn't that good. There are also several upside-down cardboard boxes that are transparently the iconic "THE ORANGE" brand from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, although Dave can only hide behind them and not under them.
  • One of Duff's power up sequences ends with a parody of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, with Duff as Adam and one of his robot's arms as God.
  • One of the chefs that Bancho has a cook-off against, Alex, is a clear parody/expy of Kyo Kusanagi from The King of Fighters.
  • Yoshie’s overwhelming reaction at finally tasting the otherwise terrible looking roasted shark head, is a direct reference to the anime-style overreaction of the food tasting judge in Stephen Chow’s God of Cookery.
  • Gumo's Reaction Shot to tasting Bancho's cooking has the two of them recreate the iconic scene of Free Willy with Gumo jumping over Bancho as Bancho stands on a rocky outcropping.
  • When finding the crowbar that Cobra ordered and lost in the delivery boat shipwreck, Dave wonders why the crowbar is red.
  • At one point, Dave needs to catch a venomous Arctic Octopus to obtain the antidote for a beluga it bit. Once Dave finally corners it, he has two options: "Harvest" and "Rescue".
  • The second control room cave is played as an autoscroller while riding a beluga. The exact mechanics of the autoscroller, combined with some of the enemies (in particular the stationary bullet shooters), makes one think of an homage to the nightmarish Welcome to the Machine level from the first Ecco the Dolphin game. It's at least much easier than its apparent inspiration.
  • The shovel weapon Dave can find has him strike downwards with it while standing on it like a pogo stick, much like Shovel Knight.
  • The Unexpected Shmup Level against Yawie is reminiscent of the Darius series, being a shoot-em-up featuring giant sea creatures as bosses. Yawie even has a few attacks similar to G-Darius' resident Anomalocaris boss, Accordion Hazard, and its Flash of Pain when shot even shows that it's made of multiple damageable parts like the bosses of that game. The Weaponized Offspring swarms it sends out move in similar ways to the popcorn enemies in Darius Burst.
  • The Sleepy Toy Hammer is inspired by and modeled after the preferred weapon of the clowns from Barotrauma.
  • The secret boss Lusca has the front half of a great white shark and the back half of an octopus, with Dave even calling it something out of a low-budget creature movie.
• Shown Their Work: The Mantis Shrimp dish is classed as a lobster dish as shown by the Lobster Seasonal Event rather than a shrimp dish as the name implies, since they're shrimp-like crustaceans and they're not a good candidate for the Shrimp event prior.
• Smashing Survival: A multitude of larger sea creatures have Grapple Moves which if they hit Dave will send him into one of these. Sometimes they merely involve rapidly tapping one button, sometimes it's tapping two buttons back and forth. The Tiger Shark's attack also has a unique riposte move with Dave's diving knife you can do by moving the cursor into the right position, dealing devastating damage.
• Sniper Rifle: One of the guns Dave can equip is a sniper rifle (and its upgrades). Sniper rifles can only load a few ammo, but has high damage, long range, and can even pierce through several fish.
• Speaking Simlish: The dialog is rendered primarily in electronic gibberish.
• Special Guest: Several YouTubers who backed the game during its early access period were added as hireable NPCs.
• Spread Shot: The Triple Axel gun shoots three bullets at once in a small spread. Each bullet is weaker than a standard rifle shot, but if all shots connect they can deal significan damage. Its upgrades can increase the number of bullets shot at once, up to five at the final upgrade.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: The game features a heavy use of blending sprites and models together to a point it can be hard to tell whether some assets are 2D or 3D until they start moving.
• Status Effects: Dave can inflict status effects with certain weapons, and some enemies can inflict them to Dave as well.
  • Poison: Damage Over Time effect
  • Shock: The target moves slower, and occasionally gets stunned while moving.
  • Sleep: The fish stops moving for a while, but will wake up when taking damage. Dave can capture them while asleep for highest quality meat.
  • Freeze: The target stops moving. The next attack to a frozen target will deal extra damage.
• Super Window Jump: How Dave escapes from Sea Blue's secret base once caught by guards.
• Thunder Hammer: Mjölnir itself can be found buried in ice in the glacier zone; not only does it do large amounts of damage in melee and afflicts the target with a Shock debuff, Dave can also throw it to cause a Herd-Hitting Attack that also confers Shock (given the glacier zone is full of schools of small fish that are hard to hit with normal harpoons and guns, it is a very useful attack).
• Threatening Shark: Sharks are some of the most common (and toughest) predators that Dave will have to face. They're also a prime ingredient for some of the better dishes. The most threatening of them all is Klaus, a Great White Shark that arrives in the Blue Hole as part of a sidequest and has built a reputation among the player base as one of the toughest bosses in the game due to his high speed, massive health pool, and incredibly unpredictable and damaging attacks.
• Time Management Game: The restaurant night phase plays like this; Dave and his waiters have to bring food, pour drinks, and clean the dining area before customers become frustrated and leave, all while keeping an eye on the wasabi supply as Bancho and the cooks won't make anything without wasabi.
• Tranquilizer Dart: The Hush Dart gun shoots darts that make the target fall asleep after several seconds, letting Dave capture them alive for highest quality meat. Initially it can only affect smaller fishes, but the final upgrade allows it to affect every non-boss fishes by shooting two darts at them.
• Trash the Set: The beginning of the game has the restaurant heavily damaged after an earthquake, with the first quest involving paying off the damages. The last chapter has Bancho proof the restaurant from earthquakes, but is afraid that it won't hold from any further tremors unless Dave stops them completely.
• Trick Boss: The final battle against John Watson appears to be a Hopeless Boss Fight at first. After surviving the boss' attacks for a while, John Watson mocks Dave at the hopelessness of your situation, right as a Kronosaurus pops out of the ruins, absolutely wrecks John Watson's submarine, then turns its attention to Dave, becoming the proper boss.
• Too Awesome to Use: The dishes you can serve using meat from bosses are immediately at Max level and can return a huge amount of money with 10 dishes per serving. The catch is that none of the bosses can be rematched, meaning that you can only serve each dish once and are better off saving them for events where you'll be paid more for them.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: This happens a lot in this game. As one example: In a transition between chapters, you're suddenly watching Duff heading to bed and having a dream of being at a a Japanese Idol concert, leading into a rhythm game to match beats with the music.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: The Final Boss turns into this, with Dave using a drone that Duff modified to have serious firepower and other useful features to take out the thing.
• Universal Ammo: While diving, Dave can find ammo containers to replenish his gun's ammo. This works regardless of what gun he's using.
• Very Fake Résumé: Downplayed. Talking to Drae has him sheepishly admit he lied on his resume to get the job, but is a solid worker otherwise and is statistically the best manager candidate for the Branch.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can add captured seahorses to your team for the seahorse race and cheer them on as they race to victory...as well as cook them up as a recipe ingredient for the various meals at the restaurant.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Aside from John Watson (only in his first two fights, since he dies in his third), only two of the bosses retreat to live another day — The Truck Hermit Crab retreats back into the sand missing a limb, while the Phantom Jellyfish swims away out of the entrance to its boss room.
• Whale Egg: Prior to an update, narwhals, despite being mammals, were treated as sharks by the game mechanics. This means they lay shark eggs.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: For all the animals Dave will gladly harpoon, there are multiple species that will only ever appear as unkillable subjects for the photography minigame or during quests. These are almost universally beloved cute animals like dolphins and sea turtles, typically seen as 'majestic' like manta rays or sperm whales, or "ugly but not grotesque" like giant isopods or red-lipped batfish. The only huntable cetacean in the entire game is the relatively ugly and hostile Narwhal.
• Wolfpack Boss: The fight against the dolphin poachers has three of them attack Dave at once, with each of them individually being weaker than most sharks.
• You Are Fat: Dave is on the receiving end of quite a lot of Stealth Insults and subtle jabs about his weight, something he doesn't take kindly to.

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