Dave the Diver was one hell of a debut for developer Mintrocket. I loved the deep ocean environments realised in beautiful pixel art form, I wanted to take a bite from each piece of sushi I delicately prepared, and I was completely enamoured with the engaging gameplay loop. While I was pleased to hearmy two favourite fishing games of 2023 were crossing overat the end of the year, I thought it was odd that developer Mintrocket’s followup was to bea realistic zombie extraction shooter.
What’s even more confusing is that Mintrocket has also announced a live-service game. While I didn’t quite expect 2 Dave 2 Diver, I thought Mintrocket might try to carve itself a niche, creating more games with similar aesthetics or gameplay styles. But Wakerunners is a third-person PVP action game, and it’s got all the trappings of a live-service title. It looks quite cool, don’t get me wrong, but does it spell the end of fun, bite-sized experiences likeDave the Diverin Mintrocket’s future?
I play a lot oflive-service games. They take up a significant portion of my gaming time. They’re not inherently bad, despite many of them employing the industry’s shadiest practices with the goal of player retention. They’re not the wholly soulless, uncreative monstrosities they’re often painted as, they’re not places where developers go to die. But when a small studio is acquired by a larger one and forced into theCall of Dutymachine, their interesting and exciting projects are put on hold. From the outside, it seems like all that creativity now goes into making weapon skins and battle pass cosmetics.
It’s not quite the same for Mintrocket. While it is a small studio, it’sa subsidiary of Nexon, a multi-billion dollar corporation that makes live-service games like the rest of us do sandwiches. These earners are their bread and butter, with the occasional diver-shaped filling giving players that new flavour that they crave. Dave the Diver was an unprecedented success, I imagine even surprising Nexon despite the millions they put into marketing it, so why not let Mintrocket do more of the same?
The answer is, as usual, money. While we don’t know a lot about Wakerunners just yet, I’d wager my house that it will be live-service, if I owned one. The top-down action is reminiscent of MOBAs like League of Legends, and the art style seems to borrow heavily from Arcane too. With Nexon’s experience in this arena, I think it’ll be a success. It might even be a fun game, if not my type of thing. It’s got a striking aesthetic, cool character designs, and the gameplay looks frenetic. Some people love that. But will it take up too much development time?
This is the big question. If Mintrocket has to allocate ten percent of its workforce to keep Wakerunners running with new updates, cosmetics, bug fixes, balance patches, more characters, new #content to keep players in the ecosystem, that’s ten percent of its workforce not doing something else. Sure, there’s probably a handful of devs still working on Dave the Diver to ensure its maiden voyage continues smoothly, but a patch for that game won’t have the same levels of expectation as one for a live-service title.
The Cast Of Wakerunners So Far
Mintrocket isn’t doomed. Wakerunners looks vibrant, it looks fun. It’s allowing the developers to try something completely different from Dave the Diver and Nakwon: Last Paradise. We don’t know if Nexon has suddenly pulled a thousand devs off other projects and into the Mintrocket brand.
Having said that, it’s disappointing that Mintrocket’s next two games feel so bland. A realistic zombie shooter and a live-service action title? Dave the Diver blew a breath of fresh air out of his oxygen tank and into my life, scooping me out of a deep gaming rut at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and showing me the wonders of the ocean on my way to the surface. I gorged on its delicious sushi platters, and now I’m looking at the dessert menu, it seems barren. I’ve gone from freshly caught tuna sashimi to putrid green, disease-ridden ice cream. Dave the Diver was always going to be hard to follow up, but Mintrocket will have to work extra hard to prove either of its next two games are worth my time.
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