Sponsored: How Unity and Early Access Contributed to Dave the Diver's Indie Success

Dave The Diver has emerged as one of the most notable indie hits of the year. Developed by MINTROCKET, the game presents a unique challenge where players must collect fish to supply a sushi restaurant, which involves gathering resources, crafting new items, battling giant underwater creatures, completing quests, and managing the restaurant. This distinctive blend of gameplay elements has contributed to the game's success. According to Jaeho Hwang, the director of Dave the Diver at MINTROCKET, the idea for the game was inspired by a Japanese-style pub on Jeju Island's seaside that only opens at night. The pub owner dives in the morning to catch fish and serves them to customers at night. Hwang also drew inspiration from a manga called 'Blue Hole', which tells the story of a blue hole connected to an ancient world. He found this concept captivating and wanted to create a game centered around a mysterious giant hole in the sea. The game has achieved significant critical acclaim, boasting a Metacritic score of 89 and a 100% recommendation rate from critics on OpenCritic. It has also received an 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rating from over 45,000 players on Steam. Furthermore, the game sold one million units worldwide within ten days, making it one of the top 20 new releases on Steam in June. Hwang attributes the game's success to its unique concept and the incorporation of lighthearted humor. He believes that players were drawn to the game's quirky characters and intuitive gameplay mechanics, such as the ability to pick up a fish and immediately understand its corresponding sushi. This intuitive design has helped attract casual players and keep them engaged in the game. However, with the game's diverse range of challenges and elements, the biggest challenge for the developer was achieving a harmonious balance between these components. Hwang acknowledges that incorporating multiple elements made it difficult to balance everything, but the team was able to overcome this challenge through trial and error. The game was built using the Unity engine, and MINTROCKET collaborated with Unity's engineers to overcome obstacles during game development. Hwang explains that while creating the game, the team wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the engine itself, but this required a significant amount of time to review the engine source code and solve issues. Unity's engineers, who possess a good understanding of the source code, provided valuable guidance on the fundamental intentions of the engine development. This guidance enabled MINTROCKET to easily solve problems they encountered. The team also utilized Unity's Asset Store and one of the engine's popular plugins during the development phase. Hwang notes that the Unity Asset Store offers a wide range of resources that can be easily accessed and utilized. These resources, which are reasonably priced, allowed the team to focus on game development itself. For example, they were able to obtain 2D liquid physics assets from the Unity Asset Store, which saved them time when implementing the green tea mechanic. Additionally, the Odin Inspector plugin proved to be a valuable tool, as it would have taken significant time to create similar tools for game designers and artists without it. Unity has also celebrated the success of Dave the Diver, along with other Unity creators, through a recent blog post. As Hwang mentioned earlier, the game required significant trial and error to ensure it functioned as intended and was intuitive for players. This is why releasing the game in Early Access proved to be a crucial decision. Hwang concludes that despite conducting internal testing, predicting player preferences is always challenging. The game received many quality of life requests from players that the team had not anticipated, and players' perceptions of the game differed from their expectations. However, the eight-month Early Access period allowed the team to understand players' needs, particularly through daily interactions with the community. Hwang emphasizes that once the game is released, the development process continues in collaboration with players, as they work together to shape the game's direction.