Since Mintrocket launched Dave the Diver in 2023, CEO and game director Jaeho Hwang has been having fun finding ways to coordinate crossovers between the quirky management sim and his favorite franchises. Mintrocket is releasing its first fully original Dave the Diver DLC on June 18, and Hwang told Polygon in a video call that it’s more like a sequel or a spinoff.
“We want to give existing players a genuinely new experience in the world of Dave the Diver,” he said. “Unlike typical DLC that adds a few missions, weapons, or characters, we made the bold decisions to change all the foundational systems.”
In the Jungle takes Dave and friends away from the Blue Hole to a freshwater jungle lake, which is home to an ancient underwater civilization and plenty of new aquatic creatures. Since freshwater fish aren’t safe to eat raw, Bancho Sushi will be replaced with Bancho Grill, which caters to the residents of nearby Utara Village. The locals aren’t friendly to outsiders, so Dave will need to talk to them and help them out to build relationships and persuade them to drop by.
“In the original game, it’s a passive experience,” Hwang said. “You stay in the restaurant, customers visit you, and you need to give them a good experience with their request. But this time they need to move around. They need to do everything proactively.”
Another big change for In the Jungle is how time progresses. Dave the Diver was divided into blocks of time that players could use to dive and run their restaurant. The DLC gives players 12 hours to spend each day however they want – whether that’s exploring Utara Village or diving – before they head to the restaurant in the evening. During the playtest phase, the developers added plenty of reminders to nudge players to go diving because they found it was easy to forget. Diving always takes two hours off the clock, regardless of how much time you spend in the water.
“We originally made it almost half the day to go in the water and come out, but it was tough for users to manage this time, and our testers felt rushed to do all the village stuff,” Hwang said. “We kept making it shorter and shorter.”
The DLC features a mix of new and returning friends. The Ash Ketchum parody Sato is back with more digital cards to collect. A new party system means Dave’s boss Cobra can join him on his adventures. Bancho Sushi’s cat mascot Momo is staying behind, but Dave and Cobra rescue a stray puppy named Marone. The pooch will also serve as a hunting companion, so Dave can add some bird meat to Bancho’s menu.
“We love mini-games, but if you keep adding mini-games people feel tired,” Hwang said. “We need to be careful about pacing. As a game designer, I think it works well when it ties with the game storyline. So there’s a Duck Hunt thing, where they go to the forest and need to find some ingredients.”
Hwang estimates In the Jungle will take around 10 hours to complete. The story will include references to other games, though they won’t be as overt as the past crossovers.
“The In the Jungle DLC is really important for us in a different way,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to actually expand the world of Dave the Diver, to let us tell a new story with Dave and his crew and give players the chance to experience something deeper rather than just short, event-style DLC.”
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