How it started Looks like a simple, cute fishing & restaurant management game. It's perfect for my Steam deck.

How's it feel? This is the best game of 2023. I routinely play it until 2am, and after 30 hours I'm still delighted, amazed, and completely mesmerized by every fun and creative new system I play.

And yes, it's the best on my Steam deck.

In the 2D pixel adventure Dave the Diver, you divide your time between spearfishing in colorful waters and using the fish you catch in the sushi restaurant you run. It's easy at first: swim around in scuba gear every morning and afternoon, take care of your oxygen supply, harpoon and reel in fish, and collect craft resources, seaweed, and other ingredients from the coral reef. Diving is fun and usually a calm, soothing experience with colorful fish darting here and there and kelp gently bobbing in the currents, but the relaxing atmosphere is suddenly replaced by the feeling of being nearly cut in half by a sawfish or swallowed whole by a pelican eel before you surface with your precious harvest or nearly swallowed whole by a pelican eel, before surfacing with their precious harvest, can suddenly turn into a frenzied panic.

At night, you plan the menu for the inexplicable sushi chef, Banchō, and while Banchō cooks the meal, you serve a line of customers in a frantic diner-dash style mini-game. With the money you earn, you can redecorate your restaurant, upgrade your diving equipment, and even let Banchō research new recipes as your restaurant becomes more popular on social networking sites. Fishing and restaurants work perfectly with each other in this game, but things won't stay simple for long.

Each time you play "Dave the Diver," new features and activities are added. Night fishing allows for new species of fish to be caught, and the once comfortable sea is transformed into an eerie atmosphere. The restaurant's staff management system allows the restaurant to hire and train employees to increase the amount of customers they can serve and the speed at which they can serve them.

There are fish farms to breed fish so you don't have to rely solely on daily dives, farms to grow rice and vegetables for new recipes, and eventually even underwater farms to grow different types of seaweed. Once you get used to one system, the game adds another new one. Dave the Diver has a comfortable routine, but it is constantly growing, incorporating new parts and pieces.

And while these are just a few features sprinkled throughout the fishing and sushi portions, there is more to Dave the Diver than that, full of little surprises that bypass periodically appearing throughout the 35 hours it took me to finish the main story. It's not uncommon to go out to fish and end up in unexpected places, such as following a cat through the woods for a stealth sequence or being forced to solve an elaborate puzzle of switches and mirrors in an ancient undersea temple.

An ordinary evening at the restaurant was turned upside down when another chef challenged the watchman to a cooking duel, forcing me to spend several days gathering certain ingredients. And then there was the day a strange woman arrived on a raft and convinced me to enter a mysterious undersea whirlpool to take revenge on a great white shark.

This is what makes "Dave the Diver" so wonderful. Suddenly, you may find yourself caught in a speedboat chase sequence, photographing evidence of an undersea society, or in the middle of an unexpected boss fight with a ferocious jellyfish the size of a bus. There are times when you control a character other than Dave, and in one fantastic sequence, you control Dave and another character at the same time, temporarily transforming the game into a cooperative (though single-player) mystery-solving adventure.

It's also amazing how "Dave the Diver" takes fun little ideas like the seahorse race to their full potential. Not only can you race seahorses, but you can also collect seahorses of different types and ranks, add them to your roster, and have them compete in relay races together.

The game's approximately 200 sea creatures are expressive, whether they fill the screen with cut scenes or move around as tiny creatures on the monitor.

I don't know if I can really describe Dave the Diver as "wholesome" because I spent a lot of time killing sharks and squid with depth charges, grenade launchers, and samurai swords. Besides, one of the people you meet is a weapons enthusiast who loves body pillows (that's who I got my grenade launcher from). But it's supremely charming and full of good vibes.

When I beat the last boss at hour 35, I felt like I'd had a real adventure, and the ending gently but genuinely tugged at my heartstrings. Of course, the game still did not satisfy me. Even the credit sequence gives you a great new game to learn and play, and even after the main quest is over, you can continue diving and serving sushi.

Dave the Diver is truly amazing, the biggest surprise of 2023 and my favorite game of the year so far.