Oct 7

Oct 7 Review | Dredge - Just Keep Fishing Six Months Later

This might sound like an odd Venn diagram to find yourself in the middle of, but as a huge fan of Lovecraftian tales and cosy fishing games, I knew immediately that Dredge would be right up my alley as soon as it was announced. I wouldn't blame you if you were to think those two concepts couldn't possibly go together, but if you're anything like me you'll soon realize that there's no better setting for this kind of story than idyllic sleepy towns and the seemingly peaceful open seas.

Dredge puts you in the boots of the new angler of Greater Marrow as the mayor welcomes you to the small island town and thanks you for picking up the job. A few of the things he says sound off but I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, right? He’s probably just a colour character, you know how small towns are! Your first task is to load your boat with as many fish as you can and sell them to the local fishmonger. The mayor will then leave you with one last warning: be careful not to go out at night, the fog is too thick to see anything and you never know what might be out there lurking in the mist.

It won't be long until you find a strange-looking fish caught in your net, which the game rightly calls aberrant. However, the fishmonger seems all too eager to take it off your hands, only for him to find inside its belly a peculiar object that sparks the interest of a strange man living on a nearby island. That man, as it turns out, is a collector of strange relics; he asks you to find more as he installs the necessary equipment to dredge out all kinds of objects floating in the waters, some of which will be materials needed for important upgrades on your boat.

You don't get to see your character besides a glimpse in the introductory cutscene, instead, you directly control the boat as you go out to the sea and look for fish to catch. With five regions - some more difficult to traverse than others - you'll slowly explore the different islands scattered around and help out the locals. All while looking to fill your fishy-encyclopedia with information about the plentiful bounty of mackerels and the like in this vast sea.

The fishing minigame that takes up most of the mechanical video game part of Dredge is not too challenging but it will vary in interesting ways depending on what you're trying to fish out of the waters. One of the main challenges, however, resides in upgrading your equipment with the limited resources you can scrounge up from the sea. Different kinds of fishing rods will catch different types of fish, crab pots will let you catch crabs and nets will catch basic fish for you as you sail by them without the need to stop and catch them yourself. All of these have to be slotted into the available room on your boat, like guns in an attaché case in Resident Evil. Other upgrades include engines to make the boat sail faster, and lights to see better at night and keep you saner.

In fact, one of the most important aspects of Dredge is managing your angler’s sanity - indicated by an eye at the top of the screen that gets more and more anxious and turns red, as unexplainable phenomena start to happen around you. This creeping paranoia builds over time, especially if you don't rest for long enough, but after dusk, your sanity will start to deteriorate faster and faster no matter how bright your fancy lanterns shine. At first, you'll probably listen to the mayor's warning and sleep through the night, but soon the game will let you know that the best and most valuable fish lurk out there at night. It's also easier to spot aberrations of which scaley monstrosities are worth more at night, or maybe you just don't want to go back to town just to sleep the night off when you're so close to being able to afford your next upgrade. So, despite the indescribable something that might be out there, you continue venturing in the darkness of night. You'll start seeing things, hearing noises, you'll double-guess yourself. In true Lovecraftian fashion, sometimes your own imagination can hurt you more than real threats. But then again maybe it's not just your imagination after all?

Dredge, despite its soft-edges and inviting art style, does a splendid job of building an atmosphere of dread. Visions in the distance, weird lights, chromatic aberration outlining the environment, or eyes starting to stare back at you from the deep dark ocean, all combined with unsettling music and even the vibrations from your controller at seemingly random to make you think you're in trouble, that something is deeply, deeply wrong here.

One of my favourite moments with the game was when one night I saw a boat in the distance and tried to follow it only for it to disappear into nothing as I did. That gave me an idea: the boat comes with a fog horn to signal your position through the thick fog, so the next night I saw a boat I tried blowing the horn as I followed it, but as soon as it entered the beam emitted by my light the boat turned into an eldritch being and attacked me. The weird thing, however, is that even once turned, the "boat" blew its horn back at me. That left me wondering which of the two was real, the boat or the monster?

Despite, the creeping dread seemingly being the point of Dredge, if you just want to enjoy a nice fishing game with a weird and at times creepy storyline, almost all the horror aspects can be turned off. I was actually impressed by the amount of options available in the game's settings to make the game more accessible for more people. From difficulty adjustments to changing some visual elements, these might seem like small details to most people, but for some it can be the difference whether they get to enjoy a game or not. I'm glad the team decided to add these options to the game so it can reach a wider audience.

Ok, neverminded, I take back everything I said, what the hell is that?!

Black Salt Games’ dedication to the project only becomes more obvious with each update, including its most recent one which, along with the usual bug fixes and adjustments, also adds boat customization as well as craberrations (crab aberrations). This includes a side activity where the kindly painter located in Little Marrow needs to create more pigments found in crabs to paint your boat. There will also be more shipwrecks to explore if you return to this game after it launched earlier in the year, amongst which you might find flags to hang onto your boat. Maybe all the nice decorations will be a welcome distraction from all the horrors you'll have to witness out in the open ocean.

Dredge managed to succeed my already high expectations with the sheer amount of charm and attention to detail. My inner Call of Cthulhu nerd kept getting so inspired that I started taking notes for my next TTRPG campaign, but I can't help but wonder if they weren't the one inspired by it in the first place. Some of the settings and events seem to be nodding towards some adventure books I've read in preparation for my game, as do some of the letters in bottles you can find throughout the ocean, but then again these are pretty common themes in Lovecraft's works so it wouldn't be surprising if it was all just a coincidence. One thing is pretty clear though, this game is surely a beautiful love letter to the genre and its fans.