Dave the Diver is proving to be surprisingly sticky, with developer MINTROCKET announcing the plucky, aquatic platformer has shifted another two million units in 2024, for a total of five million to date. The undeniably endearing Dave had already ratcheted up three million sales prior to coming to PS5 and PS4 in May of this year, and that, after beginning life as a Steam Early Access game, launched in 2022.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Dave the Diver is one of those exceptional indie games that rose above all the rest, like Balatro and Stardew Valley, from its homey aesthetic and truly hilarious characters and writing. In fact, it was the first game this scribe ever heard a proper indie dev, who was kind of annoyed at the situation, refer to Dave as "III" (or "iii"), as MINTROCKET is wholly owned by publisher Nexon.
This all came to a head at last year's The Game Awards when Dave was nominated for Best Indie Game, and the famously flexible Geoff Keighley gave us this banger: "Independent can mean different things to different people, and it's sort of a broad term, right?"