Shelldiver is a small game with an unusually warm reception on Steam. You play a senior turtle who takes a submarine out to catch jellyfish, sells them at a little shop and puts the money back into better equipment. This page covers what people usually want to know before buying. For how to play, see the beginner guide, and for the full achievement list, see the achievement guide.
1 What is Shelldiver
An incremental game developed and published under the name Gagonfe. The store describes it as cozy, and the premise matches: an old turtle wants to start a business selling jellyfish, which happen to be the favourite food of the local turtle population.
2 Is it an idle game
Not really, and this is the most useful thing to know before buying. Players have tagged it as an idler on Steam, but reviewers point out that it has no meaningful offline or away from keyboard progression. Money comes from dives you actively play: steering, aiming the bubble gun and deciding when to head back up.
3 How long does it last
Shelldiver is short by design. Reviews put a playthrough at roughly three to eight hours, and one achievement guide reports 100 percent completion in about four hours with nothing missable. A large share of players finish it: one review notes that around two thirds of tracked players had earned every achievement, which is very unusual on Steam.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Typical length | About 3 to 8 hours, depending on pace |
| Missable achievements | None reported |
| Difficulty settings | None reported, and none needed |
| After the last upgrade | Reviewers note there is little left to do and no new game plus |
For a USD 4.99 list price, most reviewers treat the short length as a strength rather than a flaw. It ends before the loop wears out.
4 Price and where to play
On Steam the list price is USD 4.99, and it is frequently discounted, so check the store for the current price. It launched on Steam on 16 November 2025.
On 1 September 2026 it also arrived on Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One and PC through Xbox Game Pass, in the Ultimate, Premium and PC Game Pass tiers, with cloud streaming available. If you already subscribe, that is the cheapest way to try it.
5 Frame rate and requirements
The hardware bar is very low. The one technical complaint that comes up in reviews is the frame rate: the game is locked to 60 frames per second. On high refresh rate monitors, reviewers report visible stutter, and on handheld PCs lowering the frame rate to save battery reportedly slows the game itself down.
| Minimum (store) | Specification |
|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 or AMD Phenom II X2 550 |
| Memory | 8 GB |
| Graphics | GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB or Radeon HD 7570 1 GB |
| Storage | 500 MB |
6 Controller play
The store lists full controller support, including DualShock and DualSense. One reviewer still preferred mouse and keyboard, which makes sense for a game built around aiming a gun at moving targets.
A community thread describes a navigation quirk in the skill tree on a pad: with the directional pad, one of the oxygen tank nodes was hard to reach because pressing down jumped to a different branch. The workaround reported there was to approach it from a node further up the tree, or to use the stick at a precise angle.
7 Languages
Thirteen languages are supported: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish (Spain), Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The store marks every one of them as having full audio support. The game is light on text in any case.
8 Who this suits
Shelldiver is a short active incremental game, not an idle one, about a turtle catching and selling jellyfish, at a list price of USD 4.99 on Steam and on Xbox Game Pass since 1 September 2026. Expect roughly three to eight hours with no missable achievements and little to do after the final upgrade. It runs on very old hardware but asks for 8 GB of memory, is capped at 60 fps, supports controllers, and is available in thirteen languages.
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