Demo Review 30: Dive

When the demo starts, we get to choose between Easy, Normal or Hard. Let’s go with Easy for the moment.

The intro tells us of an order of Knights Templar of Spain, who built a monastery for their King in the thirteenth century; sadly, two centuries later, an earthquake sent the whole thing into the sea, its secrets lost possibly forever. …Or are they? That’s when our main character, an intrepid diving archaeologist, comes in, decided to bring it all back to the land, in hopes of making world-changing discoveries!

A simple story for what is basically a diving game. The demo begins around the Medes Islands, and we find how to control the character underwater: to move forward, we need to press and hold the B button on the Wiimote. After which we can start treasure-hunting. The diver moves by following the cursor on the screen. We can then look for shining dots on the seafloor; these are pieces of ancient treasure to be collected; each of them is worth quite a bit of money, and that’s a good thing. You can keep collecting those and amass enough money to upgrade your equipment, whether it’s the diving suit, the flashlight or the oxygen tank.

Talking about the oxygen tank, this is one of the most important features; if you press B twice to boost the diver forward, a bit of oxygen will be taken out. The oxygen normally depletes the longer you spend underwater. Also, getting hit by underwater creatures will cause the diver to struggle and lose a bit of oxygen. Thankfully, some refills can be found down there – but don’t ask me how those things ended up on the sea floor. We can also defend ourselves from the different dangerous sea creatures, such as jellyfish and piranhas, and shoot tranquilizers at them by pressing the A button. After a while, we reach the ruins, and find a dolphin statue worth 2,000 points.

On the menu, we can see the map, and we can also move to different portions of the island to dive for treasure. We can also upgrade the diver’s items, using the money earned by finding treasure. There are also achievements to be collected. However, the demo ends as we enter the second level.

I’ve got to say, this is a fun game. A relaxing one, but a fun one. It takes a moment to get used to the different functions, because the demo only starts explaining them when they become required, such as the tranquilizer dart gun and the flashlight. This demo offers at least ten minutes of gameplay, which is more than I could say for a lot of demos out there. Thankfully, if you do find the dolphin statue, you can already upgrade some of the diver’s tools and keep on playing the first level to find secrets hidden a little deeper. I can’t buy this game for now, but I recommend that you at least try the demo. And if you like it, buy the WiiWare game.