I'm glad everyone is having fun with this one, but I'm gunna post my steam review for the small percentage of people who didn't fall in love with this game:

Hehhhh....It's okay. I don't know. It's like everything is good about it, but nothing is "great" about actually playing it? The visual style is fantastic, and I love the blend of pixel art and 3D, and the art in the sushi making cutscenes is exceptionally well done! But other than that...

The plot isn't very interesting and frankly is quite derivative. The characters are all eccentric and aloof, which makes everything seem not very serious or important like a children's cartoon.

The fishing is OK, but marred by some irritating development choices. You can't aim directly up or down, for one. Getting attacked by a fish decreases your oxygen meter because there is no health meter, which can REALLY f*** you over if you're deep and frankly makes no sense. There's also a bassy Matrix-style bullet time slowdown sound effect every time you pull out your harpoon. This sound gets really irritating when you're pulling in 30 tiny fish quickly.

The restaurant mechanics are more of a required chore than a fun section. They only last about 2 minutes tops, and the only things keeping them from being challenging and easy is how many other staff you've unlocked because it's virtually impossible to do anything by yourself (it takes your character quite literally 4-5x longer to pour a beer as it does any of your other staff), so doing the restaurant sections is less about time management or making recipes, but more about seeing how your current staff perform and trying to sell the highest price fish you can to make money. The money is used to decorate your sushi bar but decorating it doesn't change anything at all. Once you get 2-3 staff hired and upgraded (only takes maybe 15 hours) the only things you have to do anymore during the restaurants section is clean up dishes and grate wasabi for the cooks. Why can't we learn how to cook?? Why can't we upgrade ourselves so we can work as fast as the servers we hire? Why do you get DEMOTED (to a bus boy!) the longer you play?? I don't know...this section just seems really strange and unnecessary gameplay-wise, which is interesting because it's literally the entire reason the rest of the game exists.

I wasn't going to type so much about this game, but here I am. I was on the fence, but I'm going to not recommend this game. It's too far into development for much to change, and I don't think there is enough originality or payoff here to justify the cost for entry and time required to play.

P.s. People need to stop f***ing eating sharks. There is a lot of shark murder and eating in this game. It physically makes you deliver a shark head on a plate after murdering it to a guest who has a positive emotional experience and cries over how delicious it is. It's pretty gross. I don't really care if it's culturally acceptable, STOP MURDERING SHARKS.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/shark-hunting-harms-animals-at-bottom-of-the-food-chain

[–] JDubbleu@programming.dev 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I feel the exact same way, except that id recommend it for many of the things you've criticized it for. The gameplay loop is pretty unique, and the build up to cooking every night implements a level of strategy to the preparations you have to make leading up to it including what fish to catch and how you invest your money.

The game feels all over the place, but in a really good way. It's not just a repetitive, "fish, cook, repeat". There's a million random ass things that get thrown into the mix which is a complete 180 compared to most games made now. It's good because it doesn't really follow the traditional rogue-lite formula that we've come to know. It gives off the feel that the developers created the core game, (fish, cook, repeat) and then along the way took a bunch of, "wouldn't it be cool if we did x" idea they had and threw it in there to mix the game up. It's a super nice game to play while relaxing as the stakes are low, the story doesn't require immense focus to follow, and you're ultimately just fucking around under water as on overweight diver named Dave.

It feels a lot like a game made for those that don't play many games, and I think that's why it's doing so well.

[–] stanka@lemmy.ml 11 points 10 months ago

That is a very good entirely accurate review. Confirm shark murder is bad.

That said, I still really enjoy it and would recommend it.

The resturant stuff would not be my choice, but as your review states, it becomes short and superfluous.

[–] Floey@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Murdering fish okay. Murdering sharks unacceptable. 🤡

[–] businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

everyone knows as long as you haphazardly defend some arbitrarily chosen animal (digital btw) on the internet it offsets the tens of billions of real animals humans kill per year

[–] FunnyUsername@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Whataboutism.

[–] businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 10 months ago

what? are sharks not animals? not fish?

[–] FunnyUsername@lemmy.world -3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Sharks take decades to mature and have few children.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/shark-hunting-harms-animals-at-bottom-of-the-food-chain

You're a dip shit clown and i bet you loved this game for simps.

[–] Floey@lemm.ee -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We should clearly turn people who have more children than your average shark into Soylent Green, because clearly they don't ethically matter anymore. Maybe we can even feed them to sharks.

I've never played this game but keep showing how much of a clown you are.

[–] FunnyUsername@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Wtf are you talking about you senile dipshit

[–] GreenAlex@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago

Generally agree here. Makes me feel not so crazy having seen almost everyone gush about it but I'm also not sure how to fully articulate my issues with it. To me, I think the biggest thing is that it feels like the game knows the diving mechanics don't have that much going for them and so is constantly throwing distractions at me. Stardew Valley works because your quest goals are things you probably wanna do anyways to develop your farm. Meanwhile, I feel like stopping to fish in Diver Dave actively detracts from my ability to complete the constant stream of quests.

[–] Damdy@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

I don't really disagree with anything in this, but I still did 30 hours and had a load of fun in 4 days between Christmas and new year. I was constantly expecting some twist with all the fish murder I was doing though.

[–] wahming@monyet.cc 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To my understanding, sharks are endangered solely because of their fins. Without that driving demand, they're at no greater risk than any other fish.

[–] FunnyUsername@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes...shark fin soup....a recipe you have to hunt for, cook, and serve in the game.

And they certainly are inherently more risky than other fish because of their slow reproduction cycle. That's why sharks are endangered, and tuna are still doing ok.