One among final 12 months's greatest surprises was Mintrocket and Nexon's Dave the Diver, a deeply charming and humorous journey that oscillates between deep sea exploration and being a sushi chef. The sport proved successful with critics and gamers alike: It scored a whopping 91% in our evaluate, with Chris Livingston saying “I'm routinely up enjoying till 2 am, even after 30 hours it's nonetheless throwing enjoyable and inventive new techniques at me, and each time I play I'm delighted, shocked, and totally charmed.”
One of many foremost forces behind the sport is creator and director Jaeho Hwang, who following the sport's business success was made CEO of Mintrocket by Nexon (which additionally determined to spin-off the studio into an unbiased division). Hwang mentioned Mintrocket’s new independence would permit it to focus extra on recreation improvement—particularly the Dave the Diver IP—moderately than pitching concepts and enterprise plans to its guardian.
“I wish to broaden Dave the Diver IP itself,” Hwang advised VGC at Gamescom Asia. “I believe that’s each director’s dream, since we’ve a relatable character. However really, we didn’t go actually deep into the non-public tales in Dave the Diver, as a result of we wished to maintain the sport very informal.
“In order a director, in addition to the story DLC that we’re engaged on proper now, I additionally wish to make separate video games about every character to indicate how they met, what they did earlier than coming to the Blue Gap.”
Hwang jokes a few “Dave cinematic universe”. See, one of many recreation's charms is the wealthy ensemble forged that assembles round Dave's enterprise, offering the sport's grab-bag of genres. Hwang reckons that, in the event that they do begin exploring the broader world round Dave, this implies “the video games’ genres will be completely different.”
And it seems that Dave the Diver itself is a part of an prolonged universe anyway. “Cobra, one in every of our foremost characters, he’s from my earlier mission, Evil Manufacturing unit,” says Hwang. “He was an arms vendor who had his license revoked, and after that, he retired and loved his life, and one thing occurred, and he determined to return into the Blue Gap. So I actually wish to inform this type of story in different video games.”
Hwang says even when Mintrocket expands into publishing or different initiatives, the scale of the groups engaged on every factor will keep comparatively small: “I believe the 20 to 30 individuals group is the concept.”
Dave the Diver just lately acquired a Godzilla DLC, in addition to tie-ins with different titles like Dredge and Balatro—even Geralt's turned up in it now. With that mentioned the DLCs launched to date have tended in the direction of minigames and one-offs, so the information of a story-focused DLC is greater than welcome. And as for the spinoffs, Mintrocket ought to make a little bit recreation about discovering cat meals for Momo and Mochi, after which they’ll take all my cash.
