Dave the Diver: In the Jungle is a paid expansion that critics keep reviewing like a sequel, and most sound a little surprised by how much is in it. OpenCritic lists Mintrocket's DLC at a 92 Top Critic Average, with 93% recommending it across 31 reviews. Metacritic is cooler at 86 on PC, pulled down by one negative review. For a $10 expansion, both are big numbers.
It came out June 18, 2026 on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and Switch. Dave leaves the Blue Hole for a remote village, where a lake, a jungle, Bancho's new grill and a pile of new minigames reshape the old loop without discarding it. Critics call it generous, charming and bigger than a DLC label suggests. Several also point to the same pressure point: Dave the Diver was already a game about being pulled in ten directions, and this adds more.
Dave the Diver: In the Jungle review scores
- DayOne: 9.5/10
- Loot Level Chill: 9.5/10
- Screen Hype: 9.5/10
- Digital Chumps: 9.3/10
- Pizza Fria: 9.1/10
- PC Gamer: 90/100
- Gamers Heroes: 90/100
- Gamer Social Club: 9/10
- Uagna: 9/10
- Game8: 88/100
Metacritic's PC Metascore is 86 from 11 critics: 10 positive, none mixed, one negative. The outlier is The Wand Report at 40, which criticizes the story premise while acknowledging some gameplay improvements.
Christopher Livingston at PC Gamer called it "packed to the gills with activities and swimming with great characters," and "just as charming and surprising as the base game." He expected a weekend distraction and spent more than 25 hours, finding boss fights, bird hunting, beetle management, car chases, fishing, turn-based combat, restaurant work and village relationships.
Will Silberman at Digital Chumps called it "a meaningful expansion of the Dave the Diver-verse" that opens up the world beyond the Blue Hole, adds minigames and builds Dave's relationships with villagers. He hit instability on Switch 2 during review, with input lag and random crashes, some patched by the time he wrote.
Vikki McGowan at Gamer Social Club called it the game's "newest and most expansive expansion," praising the mystery, the new dishes and the amount to do, while noting there may be "a few too many new things to juggle down in the jungle." That's the whole argument: it's strong because it's overflowing, and occasionally tiring for the same reason.
What critics love: the village
Reviewers keep saying the new setting changes the feel of a day. The base game had a clean rhythm: dive, gather, survive, serve sushi, repeat. In the Jungle keeps that, but lets the surface breathe. PC Gamer says Dave can wake in a cabin, walk into the village, gather plants, chop wood, mine ore, talk to locals and then head into the lake, and that it makes Dave feel like he's "really living in the world" in a way the original didn't.
Dave has always been easy to root for: a tired, kind, slightly overwhelmed man who says yes to everyone. The villagers have relationship meters, likes and dislikes, side quests and reasons to slowly trust Dave and Bancho. Digital Chumps notes that Bancho's Grill depends less on online hype and more on relationships with the village. That's a small mechanical change with a nice emotional payoff: you're trying to belong somewhere, not just optimize a restaurant.
The other big praise is variety: freshwater diving, a Jungle Gun with multiple modes, grill management, furniture crafting, gathering, turn-based jungle combat with timed guards and attacks, beetle battles, bird hunting, block puzzles, music minigames, fishing ponds and a shooting range. Written out it sounds absurd; critics say that's the appeal.
Jesse Norris at DayOne says the "quality and variety" are something few games can match. Loot Level Chill says it's "packed full of new ideas and jungle charm" and could almost be sold on its own. Uagna calls it a "must-have DLC." Screen Hype says it's like coming home to find new rooms in a house you already love. Many critics are reacting as if Mintrocket shipped a second campaign.
The criticism: too much to juggle
The caveats don't sink it, but they're worth taking seriously.
Digital Chumps praises the expansion while naming the friction. Beyond the Switch 2 instability, the village and jungle can make Dave feel heavy. The base game's charm came from a neat split between sea exploration and restaurant service. In the Jungle adds more walking, real-time village routines and daily choices. That adds texture, but Dave spends more time trudging through spaces that don't move with the snap of his underwater life.
Gamer Social Club liked most of the new systems, including the turn-based combat, but felt the pile-up: furniture crafting, shooting range, block stacking, relationships, fishing, restaurant service, diving, combat and side quests. Each one is charming alone. Together they create the familiar Dave the Diver overload, where you laugh at the next surprise and then wonder when you'll get back to what you set out to do.
The beetle battles are the clearest miss. Digital Chumps says they're too dependent on randomness and impossible to master satisfyingly. Dave the Diver works because you trust its constant new systems to be better than they need to be; when one is thin, that trust breaks for a minute.
TheGamer is the review to read if you're wary. It liked the freshwater ecosystem, the village relationships, grill service and bug catching, counted seven chapters, about 80 fish and 30 bug species, and joked it could have been sold as Dave the Diver 2. But it found the turn-based combat a novelty that wore thin, especially once bosses turned into damage sponges, though the highlights outweighed the weaker combat missions.
The praise isn't because every piece is perfect. It's because the messy whole is still generous, funny and alive.
Should you play Dave the Diver: In the Jungle?
It's one of the best-reviewed expansions of 2026 so far. The scores are tight, the praise is specific, and the complaints are about excess rather than anything missing. Mintrocket took a game known for changing shape every few hours and made an expansion that changes shape even more.
If you bounced off the base game because the endless variety felt like busywork, this won't change your mind; it adds systems rather than removing them. If your favourite part of Dave the Diver was never knowing what odd job it would hand you next, critics are unusually confident about this one. Dave goes on holiday, finds a polluted lake, opens a grill, makes friends, fights monsters, manages beetles and still looks embarrassed when anyone thanks him. If you finish it, note in Perthro whether the beetles won you over.
