Since its release late last month, Dave the Diver has been making waves in the gaming sphere. It’s a mishmash of the most popular game genres: it’s a farming sim with diving elements, complete with a dash of Cooking Mama, Instagram for cooks, and WarioWare-style mini-games where you catch fish and chop them up to serve.
We’re not the only ones who have been utterly obsessed with MintRocket’s latest hit, though; in an article published by The Guardian, Black Mirror creator and lead writer Charlie Brooker revealed his cultural highlights of 2023, and wouldn’t you know it, Dave the Diver’s on his list too.
“This is a game where, during the day, you dive down into a lagoon to harpoon or catch fish and collect seaweed. Then, at night, you run a sushi restaurant: you create recipes and serve them. I’ve done some form of salt-encrusted shark-fin sushi – a lot of this stuff sounds inedible. But it’s weirdly meditative: it’s a strangely comforting, old-school piece, which I found extremely addictive and soothing. And we can all do with that in this day and age.”
It’s particularly funny, especially considering that the rest of the items on Brooker’s list are considerably less silly than this little video game with over-the-top cutscenes of chefs and food inspectors falling over themselves eating good sushi. His list includes the podcast Nothing Is Real, as well as the documentary Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland.
Dave the Diver has been out for a few weeks at this point, but there’s still plenty of content to look forward to as the story expands, and more fish and regions get added to the game.
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