Among the other things coming to Midnight in patch 12.0.5, Abyss Anglers sounds an awful lot like Dave the Diver

While there’s a ton coming to WoW in patch 12.0.5, one of the smaller features, Abyss Anglers, caught our eye, because it seems similar to an indie game a lot of us around the office adore: Dave the Diver. The premise of Dave the Diver is that you’re Dave, and you have to go dive into a semi-magical lagoon every day to stock your beachside sushi restaurant with the freshest fish. By selling fish, you get money (and social media cred) to buy better equipment.

The diving and fishing part of Dave tracks neatly onto the upcoming Abyss Anglers, where you dive into the water off the coast of Zul’Aman to spear fish for better gear. It’s tough to say how much further the comparison will stretch beyond at this point. If you’ve played Dave, you know the core gameplay loop is only one tiny fraction of its charm. We’ve repeatedly referred to it as an “advent calendar” game type, where there are several different discrete loops, and types of loops — and many of them are deliberate, respectful homages to other games. There’s a minigame similar to chocobo racing, a farming minigame, a rhythm game, a cooking sim game where you slice and dice, and a pokemon collect-em-all aspect, too. At one point you can even play a very simplified version of Balatro within the game (and you can use Dave the Diver card faces in Balatro).

I would not expect to see many of these smaller loops in WoW. One thing we might expect to see is something like the second major loop from Dave. After he’s done fishing for the day, someone has to run all that sake and expertly sliced sushi from the chef to the customers (hopefully for tips). While we can’t be sure exactly what we’ll do with all that fish yet, I would guess we aren’t just scooping it all up to sell on the Auction House. It does promise rewards ranging from cosmetics to gear upgrades. Plus, given the nature of the whole thing, I would guess that we’re getting at least one more fun little currency this expansion, solely earmarked for better spears or nets or scuba air tanks.

Or maybe this whole post is just an excuse to fire up Dave the Diver again. We’ll know more about Abyss Anglers in the coming weeks!