Hi everyone, I’m Jaeho Hwang, the director and game designer behind Dave the Diver. While our studio is getting ready for the upcoming release of Dave the Diver’s next big DLC expansion, In the Jungle, we’ve also been cooking up another unique project that we wanted to share with everyone on PlayStation. It’s not DLC, but an entirely new game, starring the best chef you’ve met at the Blue Hole… Bancho. And at today’s show, we debuted the first trailer. Check it out below.
Play Video
There are so many Dave the Diver characters that resonate with fans, but the love for Bancho always stood out to us as next level. Bancho has been ranked 1st place in a massive fan vote and is one of the most-cosplayed characters we see whenever we go to gaming events.
Bancho The Chef is Mintrocket’s new game for PlayStation 5, which tells the story of Bancho’s growth as he travels across Japan, Korea, China, and other Asian regions, learning cuisine from master chefs in each locale.
A mix of cooking sim, RPG, and adventure, this all-new standalone prequel is set in 2004, 19 years before the events of Dave the Diver. Back when Bancho still had his hair and was yet to walk the path of a sushi master, and you’ll be with him on every part of his journey.
Unlike Dave the Diver, where the player only served dishes in the sushi bar, the core gameplay loop this time has you cook meals and serve them to customers directly within a time limit. This would mean growing as a chef, raising each restaurant’s reputation in each region, and learning techniques from each locale’s culinary master.
Bancho the Chef isn’t just about cooking. Just like its predecessor Dave the Diver, the game packs in a rich variety of gameplay that refuses to stay confined to a single genre, including mini-games like fishing and petting cats. Beyond the simple cook&serve routine, Bancho takes on cooking requests from the unique locals of each region, gaining experience and gradually evolving into a true master chef.
What we poured the most effort into for this title is, without a doubt, the act of “cooking” itself.
You’ll already see from the trailer just how much attention we’ve paid to each dish and its construction. This time, we moved from pixel art to 3D in order to express the textures and fine details of cooking that pixels alone couldn’t quite capture. We invested countless hours into the smallest culinary details, like the glistening sheen on a fillet of fish, the splatter of oil during frying, the rising smoke from the grill, and so much more.
Beyond visual delight, our vision for this game is to let players physically feel the joy of cooking with their own hands. In this regard, the DualSense controller is the ideal partner for Bancho the Chef. We’re fully leveraging DualSense wireless controller’s features, including haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and even the gyro sensor, to recreate the textures and sensations of cooking.
For instance, when slicing fish, you can feel the contact between knife and cutting board through haptic feedback. When cracking an egg, the adaptive triggers and the controller’s built-in speaker work together to make it feel as if you’re handling the ingredient yourself. And when washing dishes, we’ve used DualSense wireless controller’s touchpad to recreate the tactile sense of scrubbing a plate by hand.
There are plenty of other elements Dave the Diver fans will love, but we hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve revealed today. We’ll have more to announce later this year, so please stay tuned.
In the meantime, be sure to add Bancho the Chef on your wishlist. We’ll be by to take your order soon!
