| Dave the Diver In the Jungle | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Overview
What is Dave the Diver In the Jungle?
Dave the Diver: In the Jungle is the newest content DLC for 2023’s adventure-management roguelite title Dave the Diver. The crew and his friends say goodbye to the Blue Hole for a bit and find themselves deep inside the jungle after a mysterious phenomenon inside a village called Utara calls for their help. What initially came off as a simple expedition quickly turns into something much deeper. Dave the Diver and the crew are on their way!
The game adds 10 to 15 hours of content, such as a whole new story to pursue, new restaurant management gameplay, new characters to meet and bond with, new locations to explore, and a plethora of new fish to turn into grilled dishes.
Dave the Diver In the Jungle features:
⚫︎ A New Village, Utara
⚫︎ A Freshwater Lake With New Fishy Creatures to Find
⚫︎ A Forest To Explore
⚫︎ RPG-like Mechanics
⚫︎ A Friendship System
⚫︎ Unexpected Collaborations.
| Digital Storefronts | ||
|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 Epic |
 Xbox |
| $9.99 | ||
 Switch |
 Switch 2 |
 Playstation |
| Coming Soon | ||
Dave the Diver In the Jungle Review: The Jungle Has Never Been Greater
Out of the Blue and Into the Green
Dave the Diver was one of the games I sunk hours into. It was hard not to like the pixel art visuals, the colorful cast, the right blend of cozy and challenging, and the variety of gameplay it had. One minute you’re fishing and hooking in seafood like no one’s business; the next you’re managing a sushi shop with polished ease. There was just something about that gameplay loop that hooked me—and thousands of others, apparently. I was stuck in the Blue Hole for quite a bit.
Three years later, and here we are again with Dave and his ragtag team—not to find out even more things about the Blue Hole but on a whole new adventure in the outskirts of the jungle. As evident in the title, Dave the Diver: In the Jungle takes Dave and the crew outside of the place they called home, seeking to restore peace to another area hit by a strange anomaly, much like the Blue Hole early on.
Welcome to the Village of Utara
Out of the Blue Hole and into the heart of the jungle, Dave, along with Dr. Bacon, Cobra, and Bancho, make their way to the village of Utara after Dr. Bacon’s colleague, Muna, requests their help to observe the strange phenomenon happening in the village’s lake, similar to what happened with the Blue Hole in the base game. Even as they arrive, they are already faced with one of the strange occurrences—a marine dinosaur carcass washed up on shore despite the lake being a freshwater source. There have also been frequent earthquakes, as well as animals, both on land and in the water, being unusually aggressive. The lake has turned yellow from an odd pollution as well, making the villagers anxious.
Of course, as experts in the field of weird habitat phenomenon, they (well, mostly Dave, as per usual) are tasked with investigating the depths and finding out what’s really going on. But that’s not the only thing the villagers seem to be suffering from—their local dishes taste awful, muddy, and undercooked, sounding off alarm bells in our resident chef’s head. Bancho now has another goal for the village, and that is to introduce to them the wonders of proper cooking. Thus, Bancho Grill is born.
Dave sure has got a lot on his plate to save this charming little village—but it’s all in a day’s work as Dave the Diver!
New Lake, New Grill
In the Jungle’s gameplay mostly retains the diving and restaurant management aspects, but with new twists. For one thing, there’s no need to stick to just one gun anymore—the Jungle Gun is able to switch between the Rifle, the Shotgun, the Net Gun, and the Sniper Rifle at ease with the roll of the scroll wheel, allowing one to change strategy and attack on the fly. This makes exploring more productive without having to worry about gun types. It’s a blessing—the fish feel much more aggressive than they were in the original game, so there’s an added challenge in there.
And for this new location, it’s not a new Bancho Sushi branch, but rather a whole new restaurant as mentioned before—Bancho Grill. Trading in rice and soy sauce for ingredients like lemongrass, calamansi, coconut milk, and sambal sauce, among others, Bancho Grill now creates mouthwatering fish dishes that are inspired by Southeast Asian and West Asian cuisine. With a new restaurant comes new mechanics as well. This time around, you’re not just moving left and right across the counter to serve customers drinks and sushi, but instead you’re sprinting around ala Diner Dash with the new isometric view and new skewer side dishes to cook.
This style of restaurant management gameplay feels much more engaging and immersive than its predecessor, seeing Dave and the other employees actually run around serving customers. On another note, it also does hit the nostalgic feelings a little as someone who grew up on Diner Dash, so perhaps that’s what makes it much more enjoyable for me.
Familiar RPG Elements, Ala Dave Style
New ways to play don’t end with just upgrades to diving excursions and opening up Bancho’s new resto. Outside of those, most of the game now plays out kind of like a JRPG. Back then in Dave the Diver, most of the exploration was done underwater, and on the surface, you only had the sushi bar, the crop farm, the fish farm, and the branch bar to go to by boat. Time only passed every time you went into the water, returning in the evening to open the restaurant.
Now, you actually have the freedom to do almost whatever you want—semi-open-world style. Dave isn’t just limited to going straight into the water now, as he now goes around different areas. He can talk to NPCs, gather crops like bananas and calamansi, collect insects, take part in beetle battles, have things crafted by the blacksmith and the carpenter, go exploring and gathering in the forest, and more. Time also passes in real-time, so there’s a bit of planning to go through if you want to do all you want to do per day. And believe me, the time passes by really quickly when you’re having fun and you’re only halfway through your planned schedule.
One of my favorite new things is the overworld exploration and turn-based combat ala JRPG, which you unlock fully after uncovering the forest area. There, you can fish freely, fight against aggravated wild animals and get loot, go bird hunting, gather resources, and even go through a little bit of dungeon crawling in the temple. The temple is outfitted with several environmental puzzles as well, as per usual for an RPG. Even though it’s not the main part of the game, everything feels polished and engaging. At some point, I might have just wanted to stay in the forest area forever, but the story says no.
Another familiar element added to the game is the bond or relationship menu, most commonly found in farming-life simulation games and the like. For In the Jungle, Dave must build rapport with all of the villagers of Utara in order for them to actually come and visit the restaurant. Each villager has a set of favorite gifts and side quests to complete to bring them up to four hearts. It feels like Stardew Valley all over again…
Personally, its RPG flair is one of my favorite things about the DLC as an RPG enjoyer. It makes the world feel just a bit more alive and immersive than ever before, from getting to know each and every villager on a slightly deeper level all the way to the familiar turn-based combat in the forest area. However, with that said, it can feel pretty overwhelming at times with how much you have to do with so little time. Every single villager now has a quest or so for you to do, so getting through that (if you’re into 100% completion like I am) can be a doozy.
Unexpected Collaborations Add A Sprinkling of Fun
If it’s one thing that Dave the Diver is pretty pro at, it’s getting collaborations to come and wreck havoc (in the best way possible) in the Blue Hole. Dredge, Godzilla, even Ichiban Kasuga and Jimbo from Balatro have all made appearances in Dave the Diver, adding a touch of fun that only collaborations can do.
Luckily for us, that extends to the In the Jungle DLC as well! While not as extensive as the dedicated DLCs with their respective quest lines and new game mechanics, it’s a fun little anecdote to keep track of. Some of these characters do have quests and then can be recruited to become staff for Bancho Grill afterwards, while others just join in for fun.
The first one you will encounter is Martin Tweed from Journey to the Savage Planet, who crash-lands onto the island after his rocket goes haywire (as if that’s a surprise…). He even helps out with clearing the lake of pollutants, allowing for safer exploration. The next one was even more fantastical—Wuthering Waves’ (male) Rover finds himself in the game’s universe and becomes a Bancho Grill employee because he doesn’t want to go home to Solaris-3 yet. And…I’ll leave the others for more surprises, but their appearances definitely put a smile on my face.
And that’s not where the "collaborations" end. While not direct collabs, several mini-games and some dialogue text nod to video game and pop culture references. For instance, a very popular drum arcade game’s gameplay mechanics make a feature in a special village event, and one of the activities you manage to unlock later on is reminiscent of (or rather, is a direct reference to) the 1984 classic Duck Hunt.
Well-Paired Audio Visuals
With the introduction of new locations, the visuals seem to have been made better as well. The saltwater depths of Blue Hole were pretty already, but there’s something about the verdant greens of nature that seem to really stand out to me. In the Jungle manages to create these gorgeous landscapes in the heart of the jungle. Towering trees of different kinds, lush greenery as far as the eye can see, flora and fauna dotting the grass, colorful insects flitting about—it’s simply beautiful, even in its blockier style of pixel art.
The character designs are lovely too, each villager unique in presentation. And I don’t mean just a color swap or an added hat or something; the villagers have their own distinct look and tattoos, which is always a good touch. Animations are smooth all throughout, from the character movements to the well-rendered pixel cutscenes you watch when upgrading gear or enhancing a dish. The UI is also neat, clean, and intuitive, without overcrowding the screen or being hard to maneuver around.
However, because there are so many more assets and background things in the game, the overworld greenery does blend into each other a little too well sometimes. This is most evident when you’re in the forest, where things like Green Herbs and Antidote Herbs blend too cleanly into the background. There’s a little bit of a white-yellow sparkle when something is interactable, but more often than not, it’s hard to see.
Tying it all together is the calm and chill lo-fi audio, the epitome of cozy. Of course, there are those battle tracks for bosses and the turn-based battle in the forest, but most of the game is wrapped in almost peaceful tracks—even as you’re exploring the dark depths of the temple. My only gripe is that they have quite an extensive lineup of tracks as per the music player on your in-game phone, but I’ve noticed that you don’t really get to hear many of them when you’re casually playing. You need to go out of your way to listen to them, which is a bit of a bummer in itself.
Is Dave the Diver In the Jungle Worth It?
A Must-Have DLC
Whether or not you’re a big Dave the Diver fan or not, Dave the Diver: In the Jungle is definitely a DLC to get. With a plethora of new content that is nearly as long of a playthrough as a full game, In the Jungle really manages to elevate the base experience. It’s everything familiar, but with new mechanics and things, some of them I wish was in the base game too. New location, new gameplay mechanics, a new colorful cast to meet—it almost feels like a standalone game, and all for the low price of $9.99.
So yes, I highly recommend that you hop onto that boat and speed off into the jungle with Dave and his crew to a whole new adventure, you’ll thank me for it.
| Digital Storefronts | ||
|---|---|---|
| Steam |
Epic |
Xbox |
| $9.99 | ||
| Switch |
Switch 2 |
Playstation |
| Coming Soon | ||
FAQ
Do I need to finish Dave the Diver first before the In the Jungle DLC?
As of writing, the Dave the Diver: In the Jungle DLC is only accessible after the completion of the main story. However, the devs may add an option to go straight to the DLC without needing to complete Dave the Diver first.
Game8 Reviews
