2023's indie GOTY? (Dave the Diver) 

I can't believe NL isn't allowed to say "Zanzibar" within the first 8 seconds of the video anymore

Wednesday NL - All my friends are playing Dave the Diver. I'm the guy that gives you a bit of variety. Thursday NL - It's ya boi Northern Lion comin at ya with the hottest new indie game, Dave the Diver! Wat waaaaat!

Immediate hot takes are good indicators for banger NL videos

It’s not just the first 15 seconds, if RU-vid decides the number of times you swore crossed an arbitrary number they haven’t told anyone you get demonetized

Idk why but the discrepancy from the sheer size and power of the harpoon and watching nl harpoon basically goldfish in the tutorial made me chuckle

When he answered the will you check it (Tarkov) out with such a quick "Yep!" I laughed my ass off.

Ryan: "I like shorter games that can be replayed many times" Chat: "That's a you problem" Also chat: "When are you gonna play more SAP? 😅

The RU-vid change is encouraging people to have 15sec intros again...

Jacked January Fitness February Muscular March Adonis April Macro May Juiced June Lebron James July Anabolic August Supraphysiological September Obliques October No Natty November Deltoid December

This game's graphics are SO clean, that it made me realize how dusty my monitor was.

classic NL, calling a game GOTY within the first week of the year

I completely agree with NL's take on the 100 hour game.

NL is hella bald on my 36 inch monitor. Never really noticed as I'm always pogging on my phone.

This game seems like a nice chill vibe, looking forward to this series!

I love the design of the main dude, he looks like a friendly neighborhood dood :)

24:16 we've already found the worst bit of 2023, he can stop cooking

I agree with NL, bring on the shorter games revolution. AAA games don't need to take 7 years and a hundred million dollars to make. Give me 25 exquisite hours of an intentional, thoughtfully designed world instead of 150 where I fast travel across a buggy map the size of rhode island looking for feathers and tulip seeds.

He starts paying attention to the game at around 4:00

I wonder how many people caught that quick "House of Leaves" reference.

Duude. Dave the Diver freakin slaps. If you haven't played it. Play it. Just play it. I played it a couple of months ago, and I literally can't wait for the full release. It's a masterpiece.

Damn no Zirconium pants for first 8 seconds

I died when he said "I have a friend who is a sussy chef" at 7:52

0:34 is the z word ZERK IT

"A little wasnobby".... 😂 Starting the year out strong!

I only learned about a year ago that I've likely never had real wasabi since I've only eaten sushi in the States, just green horseradish. Imagine my disappointment.

When morbius swore in the first 8 seconds of the video the whole theater was going crazy.

This game has way too much text for NL. So I'm expecting an any% speedrun just like Midnight Suns. (I'm not complaining, I watch every MS episode)

44:04 was too funny, i love NL

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, not Fish Game!! Please don't cancel my favorite show on Netflix.

Love a Kewpie mayonnaise take to start my new year right.

40:08 bro is spitting straight facts. FUCK the plastic green grass in the sushi boxes. Why are they even there? The only purpose they serve is to weakly attempt to contain the wasabi and the sushi in different sections. Just manufacture some sushi boxes that have their own separate wasabi and sushi sections. The plastic grass doesn’t even prevent the two from mixing ANYWAY LOL

"oily rice" . As this is a Korean game maybe they mean sesame oil like it is used in Ginbab?

Visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula, very scenic and there's like 2 hours of driving involved to go anywhere. It's more techinically the Midwest than it is actually the Midwest, but still counts

33:23 omg it's mee!

Finally! Been waiting for NL to finally hop onto this game since Cohh played it. Gonna be a great series.

The bit about far cry and death stranding was so good I had to go show my roommate. Thanks NL. Stay pegged.

seeing Nexon be the game dev is crazy, the only other thing I know is maplestory (which I still play actively)

Start of video: No cursing 😇 End of video: "Ramen with a Japanese pornographic actress"

32:00 that was clutch move, you almost turned to seafood yourself :D

The green tea is the potion Ice Cube sips when he hits the one-wheel motion.

You also can't say "cum" or "cumming" so things like "welcome" or "coming soon" are really risky for the wallet.

UM ACTUALLY J Willies was in South Bend Indiana, the town of Notre Dame's campus, NL.

Giant July, there's no rules don't @ me

The stories NL tells are life lessons

50:23 don't forget Hawaii and Puerto Rico, both are a fairly unique part of the united states, especially the ladder as a culturally adjacent territory of the United States. It's a unique and engaging experience to vist.

holy f word, the egg is back

Hell yeah. I'm excited for this series. Dave the Driver is a good game.

9:16 The real fish game is “I Am Fish”

Scuba and speargun is illegal here in Greece. You want to do that it’s free diving only (no tank) :)

This is 2023's Cult of the lamb, you know exactly what I mean

Saying kewpie mayonaise is better is so dumb. Its dependent on the dish its served with. For light rice dishes with a bit of fish and veg, yes kewpie. Basically every other situation ever: Just make your own or use a light spread of dutch mayo or hellmanns. There, your definitive Mayo advice.

as someone who watches twitch vods on occasion, I think more emotes are very fun to have. Especially when chat moves very quickly, anyway

Wait so in all those movies where they hide in the water with a snorkel they could be fully submerged? Lol

Love that he is giving this a try. It is so freaking good! I have been at the end of the demo since early December. I am really hoping we get more soon! Game of the Year for me.

you can make a cool trip of Washington DC to Charlotte NC, to Savannah GA, and finish in NOLA. Just spend a day or two at each.

God this game is a banger

2:10 OMG is that Sgt. Angel Batista!?!

NL getting angry about “left mouse key” while I’m over here foaming at the mouth and smoke coming out of my ears over “WSAD”.

19:30 +2 on the joke, -2 on the take

A god's intro ++ Distilled ranting 2:30

NL BE YELLINNNNNG A LOOOOT MOREEE THAN I REMEMBERRR HIM DOING BEFORRRRE IN THE PAAAASST JERRYYYYY!

A professional diver letting himself get shanghaied into being a server, just for sushi he has to pay for anyway? What an absolute first-rate chump.

"Get rid of the plastic grass, and bring back the plastic straw!" AMEN BROTHER!

funny to look at this title now that he dropped it

Other games: Escort quest goes too slow Dave the Diver: Escort quest goes too fast

i’ve scuba dived in the great blue hole, this is pretty wild lol

NL hasn't been to Appalachia... Definitely unique compared to the Midwest.

Who up dillying they dally

snorkeling is just hold your breath when you go underwater. its not 'a hard technique' lol. all you gotta know is breath out hard when you surface

On the plastic grass in the sushi container: I concur.

My first time in Canada I ask for vinegar for my fries and they had the audacity to bring me white vinegar. Worst part of my trip...

3:14 NL knows ab Hamza lmao

NL with the hot take of putting vinegar on chips haha

I think eveyone who's known MALF could've predicted he would play cooking games a lot

Persona 5 wasn't a slog, at least the first time through.

Next youtube ToS: No words at all in first 8 seconds of video

As someone that has lived in GA for 33 years, you can just skip the South.

I looked at the list of Z-words that have gotten people demonetized and one of them was Zealand :D:D

lol when he said everyone else was playing tarkov i felt that, it just wiped and my friends have only been playing it

I love this game! Would love to see more

Dave's gone diving

This game is great. I saw you playing it and picked it up. Immediately lost 2.5 hours.

44:30 A -northern- lion fish?

B O A T

it's more like first 30 seconds it says 8-15 but it's inconsistent

3:30 Juggernaut July. goes insanely hard. Juicy July… are you freaking kidding me? After just having used Juiced!? You rly found a loophole in your own creative exercise 💀 Enjoy the rest of your Jacked January you piece. Might as well rename it to Juiced Up Janurary you frickin piece. Very Juicy January, maybe. No? How about JuicyJuice Juicebox January? Piece. Anyways, honey wake up the Golden Pack aka the Golden Pog just dropped

2023's indie goty is gonna be darkest dungeon II tho, but this is pretty alright.

NOT THE Z WORD

I've been WAITING for this game

Coming back to NL's content after a long absence and wow The way this man talks is so weird. It _feels_ like his brain is constantly going full throttle looking for bits and characters to play. It sounds exhausting.

Great looking game. Agree with a lot of your points on gaming. Most modern games AAA devs want to play it safe and do what everyone else is doing because the high cost of developing high graphics games means you need to guarantee you're gunna get a return on your investment, and because of that a lot of games these days have nothing new to bring to the table and are just their own flavor of a proven to succeed formula. I feel like before Nintendo used to be the outlier that'd try to make each game totally different in a franchise, using the excess money from their big hitters like Mario Kart to fund less popular but more unique games like Pikmin and Starfox, but since Iwata died they've since decided to just pocket all the extra money and play it safe on all their franchises and pull in more money at the expense of not doing anything out of the box. The Switch not having any gimmick like the previous consoles also doesn't help as those would encourage their devs and indie devs alike to come up with creative mechanics that utilize the gimmick. For your point on long games, I agree a lot of games they copy paste content or make things grindier than they need to be to progress to keep the player engaged for 60 hours, when they could just make it smaller and less grindy, giving it a shorter and more comfortable playtime that leaves you wanted to replay it or explore everything in the game you missed. I think back much better on games that I beat in 10 hours and went back to play 5 more times than I do games I played for 50 hours and had it feeling like a chore after 25 but it tricked me to play longer by dangling stuff that makes me think "well maybe it'll get fun again if you just grind to get to this".

this game was awesome, glad NL checked it out!

1pm on a Monday!? NL is not a Karen, that’s realistic 😂 plenty of people have a 1pm lunch including the people who run the restaurant 😂😂😂

I wanna invite you to come to Tennessee. Lots of great hiking in the Valley and it's beautiful especially in fall.

Dave out here harpooning fish no bigger than the palm of his hand.

I swear NEL is just just playing this game so he can say let him cook!! 😂 Jk it's pretty chill watching.

Jacked January Finna get jacked February Mans is getting jacked March AHH gettin jacked April Move, we gettin jacked May Jacked June Jacked July August Sleepy September Oh gotta get jacked again October No Jane, only jack November Swol December

I thought it was subnautica and the guy was a peeper 💀

Wait any One Piece enjoyers? Isn’t this just Sanji’s dream with the All Blue? Finding a sea where any fish can be caught and cooking with them?

Clearly the best length of time to ban “since last year” chatters is one year.