Dave the Diver is an exceptional adventure — but do darker themes linger beneath the surface?

Dave the Diver on Xbox is a vibrant, genre-blending adventure that combines deep-sea exploration with restaurant management, delivering one of my favourite experiences of recent years. It’s colourful, funny, and packed with content — but beneath the humour and charm lies a more complicated theme: the ocean as a resource to be exploited, where almost every creature you encounter is destined to be speared, harvested, and served up as sushi.

Dave The Diver’s loop is brilliantly constructed. Each day begins with a dive into the Blue Hole, a mysterious underwater environment that is procedurally generated with each visit, offering new fish, ruins, and dangers every day. Diving is a mix of combat, resource gathering, and discovery — the latter thanks to a charming story that I won’t spoil here. You spear fish, battle predators and collect materials, all while managing oxygen and inventory space. 

Back on land, the rhythm changes completely: you run a sushi restaurant, preparing dishes, serving customers, and upgrading facilities. The two halves of the game feed into each other seamlessly — what you catch in the ocean fuels your menu, and the better your ingredients, the more successful your restaurant becomes. It’s a cycle that’s both satisfying and addictive, keeping both me and my children captivated dive after dive.

Presentation is a major strength in Dave the Diver. The pixel-art aesthetic is gorgeous, with richly animated underwater scenes and expressive character designs. Humour is everywhere, from quirky NPCs to absurd story beats and the soundtrack shifts effortlessly between tranquil exploration themes and upbeat restaurant tracks. It’s a world that feels light-hearted and welcoming, even when the gameplay itself can be tense. On Xbox, performance is smooth, with crisp visuals and responsive controls that make both diving and restaurant management intuitive and enjoyable.

Yet for all its charm, Dave the Diver raises interesting questions about how games portray animals and ecosystems. The ocean here is treated almost entirely as a buffet. Fish, sharks, eels, and even rare or mythical species are speared and turned into sushi, with little distinction between common catches and creatures that, in reality, might be endangered. As an example, an early mission tasks us with creating a special dish — the roasted head of a White Tip Reef Shark, which happens to be considered “vulnerable.” 

Conservation and sustainability are largely absent from the narrative. Even when the story introduces unique or legendary beings, they’re often framed as exotic delicacies rather than creatures to be preserved. For players sensitive to environmental themes, this can create tension: the joy of discovery is undercut by the sense that every discovery is destined for exploitation. It’s a reminder of how games often simplify nature into mechanics, reducing living ecosystems into commodities for progression. Even as an enthusiastic carnivore, I found this a bit uncomfortable — and perhaps that’s more deliberate than I realise.

Nonetheless, the “just one more dive” factor is strong in Dave the Diver thanks to the sheer density and quality of content. The Blue Hole constantly evolves, new quests and upgrades appear regularly, and the restaurant side of the game offers endless opportunities to refine menus and chase higher profits. The balance between exploration and management is finely tuned, and the game’s humour and charm ensure that even repetitive tasks feel enjoyable. It’s easy to see why so many players have sunk dozens of hours into its world and I must say, I was delighted to see Dave the Diver appear on my preferred console.

Dave the Diver on Xbox is a delightful, content-rich adventure that blends exploration and management into a uniquely satisfying package. It’s funny, charming and endlessly replayable, with a gameplay loop that’s hard to put down. But it also invites reflection on how games use nature as a mechanic, and what that says about our relationship with the real oceans. For many, the commodification of animals will fade into the background of the fun — yet for others, it may linger as an uneasy undertone in an otherwise brilliant gem.

Dave The Diver is available now for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, PC & Mac.