Dave the Diver (MINTROCKET)
A decently lengthy restaurant management game with charming art direction, mixed with rogue-like exploration resource collection. You can hire and train your staff, raise fish in a farm, grow accompanying vegetables, collect random items to complete mini-quests, and fill a stickerbook of fish.
There are also fun little mini-games tacked on: the arcade-style ones you unlock on your phone, casino-type games you unlock at the mermaid village, and Cooking Mama-style food preparation games that you play alongside the story.
As an adherent to the “fishing should be in all video games!” mantra, I enjoyed the main premise of diving to collect fish, and I liked the idea of utilising them in running a sushi restaurant, as well. The writing, too, is simplistic but charming; though each character was ultimately one-note, they felt distinctive, and none of them overstayed their welcome.
However, the core gameplay loop stopped being entertaining very quickly, and you unlock new features too slowly to keep interest. The only thing that keeps it fresh is the fact that it incorporates a variety of different mechanics, and even that doesn’t do much – as these mechanics are ancillary to the core gameplay experience, you don’t engage with them when diving, and thus the game doesn’t actually get more fun.
Still, I had a good time with it, and I didn’t feel frustrated getting all the achievements.
Recommended.
Steamworld Heist (Image & Form Games)
A short-but-sweet turn-based strategy game about a bunch of rogue steampunk robo-pirates in space, each with their own fun design and personality. As part of the Steamworld franchise, it maintains some of the series mainstays: cowboy archetypes, villainous AI, and a short main campaign filled with simple yet endearingly sincere quips.
There isn’t much to Steamworld Heist outside of the aesthetics, though; all of the substance is in the combat, and that doesn’t have much to it, either. While the roster of playable party members all play differently enough to be unique, there’s a very clear optimal loadout, and there’s not much incentive to playing outside of this – especially once you get to higher difficulties.
You can do some fun things as you play, such as shoot the hats off enemies to collect them, and there is some ostensible challenge in collecting the swag and earning Star ratings. However, the hats are almost entirely RNG-based, which makes collecting them feel like a slog rather than a fun stickerbook, and the campaign is nowhere near hard enough nor short enough to bother getting the Higher Than The Sun mastery achievement. Rather than an achievement to be proud of, playing through the entire game again feels more like an act of tedium.
You’ll enjoy your time with it on the first playthrough–maybe even a second–but the grindiness of the achievements and the fact that the core combat is easily mastered means there’s not much to bother coming back to.
Recommended.
Powerwash Simulator (FuturLab)
Very much a game that does what it says on the tin: you’re given an assignment to clean an item, building, or area, and you’re let loose with a pressure washer. You then spend up to an hour blasting every microinch of every contracted surface with said pressure washer, switching between various nozzles and soaps (in theory) to do so.
There is some attempt at creating a story through the varying text messages associated with each contract, but it amounts to meaningless and uninteresting set dressing. There is also some relaxation to be found in the repetitiveness of what you’re asked to do, too. The game demands nothing of you except moving the mouse and occasionally clicking, and, if you’re the type of person this gameplay is aimed at, the simplicity of that can really put you in a meditative space.
On the other hand, the gameplay loop can get incredibly tedious, and there’s not much fun to be had with outside of moving your hose and watching something gradually change colour. There’s no point in using any more than the Green or Yellow nozzle with the Long Extension; anything else either doesn’t clean what it’s hitting or hits far too little to bother with, and that includes the specialty soaps – themselves in too limited supply for how lacking in functionality they are.
To add to that, the cleaning completion tracker is inconsistent, and the dirt highlight can be hard to spot, so you’ll often spend several minutes trying to find where the remaining 1% of dirt on a segment is.
There are some “challenges” involving time trialing and water efficiency, but–regrettably–nothing that comes close to the replayability and expansiveness of Viscera: Cleanup Detail.
Recommended, hesitantly.