dave the diaper is a game that i was very excited to play after hearing nonstop praise for it on the friends per second podcast and seeing extremely positive reviews for it on steam, and after finishing the demo on switch i was itching to play the full game ASAP

for the first half of my playthrough, i was totally hooked by the atmosphere and gameplay loop--intertwining restaurant management diner dash-style (wow throwback) with deep sea exploration and simple yet engaging combat felt like a match made in heaven, but once i hit the ~7-hour mark, things started to stagnate and i found myself severely needing more to keep my attention

in a coincidence that almost feels intentional, this is when the game started introducing more new mechanics, but it somehow managed to feel like an overwhelming number of features to introduce at once and simultaneously too little too late

this came off as a desperate attempt to reel me back in at a point where i was just about ready to disappointingly stop playing this game, and i did

its fun for a few hours, but once you play any more than that, the cracks in the game's design become glaringly obvious

so yeah, despite not winning the award, seeing this game take the spot of another actual indie game during the game awards and be so highly rated all across the board leaves me feeling perplexed (and honestly, angry), because im struggling to see how so many people see this game as more than mediocre
i think that GutterTrash's review puts it best, "The game's just a perfectly adequate AAA puppeting the skin of an indie game."