For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Dave the Diver. This game from developers MINTROCKET already released on PC and Mac.
I had already seen Zero Punctuation's video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXbpPyqQWEs, before playing this DEMO so for the first time in this series, i started the DEMO somewhat knowing what to expect.
The main gameplay loop in this demo is that your character, Dave, is a diver and he's been hired to dive for fish. he can do so twice a day and all the fish he catches is delivered to the restaurant that he's now helping his friend run. there are other things you can dive for, but i don't want to ruin any story stuff, but needless to say the location where he dives is unique and each dive is different. At night, the restaurant opens and as there are no waiting staff, your character has to take on that role whilst a chef makes customer's orders. As your character had been diving for fish, this restaurant is a sushi restaurant. the menu changes depending on what you caught and you have some control as to what is available to order. throughout the demo new characters are added and each one acts like a tutorial whilst also teasing story stuff and connections.
As a DEMO, it's great. it's the start of the game, the prologue and some of chapter 1. this means we get the important back story, we get the premise, we get the tutorial, and we get to see some interesting characters being introduced and some intriguing plot points that aren't revealed in this DEMO meaning you'll have to get the game to see what happens. As a DEMO, it's one of the best i've played in this series and succeeds as after playing it, i'm interested in the game.
There are some small issues with it. one that i highlight a few times in the video is how some loading screens have beautiful pictures whilst others are plain white or plain black screens that, on occasion, seem to take a little while to load. nearer the end of the video, there was also one occasion where there was some slow down. these are small issues and didn't really get in the way of gameplay. But the biggest issue i had that did affect my gameplay was in regards to the in-game phone. the icon on the screen to use it looked like the D-Pad. but it never worked. it wasn't until nearer the end of the video that i realized that it was the plus button! i was playing with the pro controller, so my plus button is round and my d-pad is a cross. so the icon on screen didn't match my controller.
