Dave the Diver, similarly, is not so much about being a diver as it is about running a sushi restaurant, or hunting for alien artifacts, or conversing with said aliens, or - you get the point. Sure, some of the more “focused” games threw us for a pleasant loop: Dredge begins as a lonely fishing sim before transforming into something otherworldly, and Humanity morphed from a pensive art project into an all-out war. In 2023, nothing was sacred in video games, and so they felt more vibrant than ever.
For the first year in recent memory, scale did not necessitate tradition, and scope did not preclude getting weird.
