MINTROCKET has finally nailed down when Dave the Diver arrives on phones, and the answer is later than the studio originally hoped: September 17, 2026, worldwide, on iOS and Android. The team had been aiming at an August window announced during its Dev Dive event, and CEO Hwang Jae-ho says the extra month is going straight into polish - the launch was pushed back to spend more time on development and ensure a better experience.
That is the small bad news. The rest of the announcement is unusually good, because the business model MINTROCKET picked is the one almost nobody picks anymore.
Free to start, $9.99 to own, and that is the entire transaction
The app downloads free and includes a trial slice of the game. A single $9.99 in-app purchase unlocks everything after that. There are no microtransactions, no paid cosmetics, no energy timers, no ads, and no pay-to-win hooks of any kind. For a port of a 2023 indie darling landing in a storefront built almost entirely around gacha and live-service monetisation, that is a deliberate statement.
It is also the full game, not a trimmed pocket edition. The day/night loop that made the original work - free-diving the Blue Hole by day, running Bancho Sushi by night - arrives intact, with what MINTROCKET describes as all of the original content included without exception.
Two DLCs at launch, two that could not make the trip
The DREDGE crossover pack ships free with the phone version, and the recently released In the Jungle expansion is available as a $4.99 add-on. In the Jungle is the substantial one - it trades the Blue Hole for a freshwater lake and a hidden village, adds isometric movement, and runs roughly ten hours.
The two that did not make it are the Godzilla and Like a Dragon collaborations, both held back by licensing restrictions that do not extend to phones and tablets. Anyone who played those on PC or console should expect them to stay a PC-and-console thing.
The touch controls got real attention
This is where the extra month is most visible in the feature list. Button positions, sizes and transparency are all customisable, and the underwater camera distance can be adjusted - a small thing on a six-inch screen that turns out to matter a great deal. Navigation has been reworked for touch too: you can tap to move directly to an NPC, and NPC names now show on the mini-map.
The fun addition is motion control. Pouring tea for customers and some cooking steps are handled by tilting the handset, which is the kind of idea that only makes sense on this platform and would have been a waste to skip.
Worth the wait
A one-month delay on a port is not a crisis, and MINTROCKET buying itself more time on the control scheme is the right call for a game whose whole appeal is moment-to-moment feel. Pre-registration is open now on both storefronts.
Dave the Diver arrives worldwide on September 17, 2026 - free to download, $9.99 to unlock in full.
