Dredge Review

Overview

Dredge is a unique cocktail of opposing ideals. It blends the peaceful serenity of fishing, with the eldritch horror of a Lovecraftian nightmare. It makes sense, the ocean is already a pretty scary place, even without Cthulhu lurking beneath the surface.

You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!

The open world of Dredge has you reeling in fish, laying down crab pots, and dredging for materials to upgrade your little fishing boat. At the same time, you will work to uncover a devious mystery among the islands while contending with the region’s eerie otherworldly power. It’s not safe out there, especially at night.

Dredge is a game that manages to be both serene and intense. As someone notably wimpy when it comes to horror games, I wouldn’t say Dredge ever drifts quite that far. But it always has a creepy and unsettling undertone, and when things go bump in the night, the game switches its calm veneer to a more amped-up dash for safety.

Gideon’s Bias	Dredge Information
Review Copy Used: Yes	Publisher: Team 17
Hours Played: 16+	Type: Full Game
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5	Platforms: PC, Xbox Platforms, PlayStation 4/5 and Nintendo Switch.
Fan of Genre: Partially	Genre: Open World, Adventure, Puzzle
Mode Played: Normal (Highest difficulty in the game)	Price: $24.99

Quite a Catch

I think above all else, Dredge has an incredibly strong charm that propels you forward, not unlike the unseen influence of an old eldritch monster gnawing on your grey matter. It’s a game I felt compelled to play after laying eyes on it, and I feel the call of the sea even now. Despite quite a few criticisms I have that I’ll be dredging up later.

In Dredge, you sail around and go fishing for a massive variety of sea life. However, you also follow a story of cryptic mystery, take on side quests, and solve a variety of clever puzzles that mix the concepts of fishing and eldritch horror.

To fully understand the depths of the story, you have to pay attention to quite a few small details, as well as examine various notes you find. I initially felt like the ending punched me in the mouth until I realized there was more than one, and I had sailed myself right into the bad one. Upon starting a second playthrough, a lot more became clear. It’s an interesting tale that fits right into that Lovecraftian despair.

Selling the fish you collect is the main way you make money, and you can also dredge up materials to upgrade your vessel with more cargo space, faster engines, new fishing equipment, or brighter lights. It’s a satisfying progression system where you definitely feel the impacts of your upgrades.

The various fish you can find require specialized gear depending on whether they are coastal, oceanic, shallow, or even volcanic. In addition to fishing and dredging, you can also purchase and use crab pots to capture crabs over time, as well as drag nets behind you to collect some species as you sail.

Fishing and dredging both involve enjoyable small minigames that play into the larger overall puzzle of the game, a puzzle that includes cargo space and time.

Maintaining your cargo involves manipulating polyomino shapes for different fish, gear, and materials. Fish can spoil, and damage to your hull can toss some of your cargo overboard. I’ve always found inventory systems like Dredge’s fun and wish they weren’t so rare in video games. It’s a fun little puzzle to play in managing your inventory and is a great deal more interesting than a simple encumbrance rating.

Time, on the other hand, moves when you do, be it sailing the seas or fishing for goodies. When night falls, the darker side of the world comes out to play, and in more ways than one.

Bump in the Night

When the sun sets, panic rises. The longer you’re in darkness the higher your panic climbs, and panic attracts the other side. You may begin to see islands that aren’t there, or buildings cast in shadow as you sail by. However, there is more to fear than mere illusions. Crashing or running aground is always a danger in the dark, but even more so when rocks appear in front of you that certainly weren’t there before. Only the glow of your lights can reveal them.

Something may slither aboard and infect your fish, crows may swarm you, the weather itself may turn against you, and multiple aberrant sea creatures can attack your ship. The game is intentionally vague on how to deal with these dangers, and that’s for the best. Discovering effective ways to avoid or at least mitigate the damage they do is part of the fun. You can’t fight directly, but you are given tools to keep yourself safe.

Sunlight isn’t always your savior either. As long as your panic is high, some of the dangers will follow you into the morning. If you sleep or hang out in bright light, your panic slowly subsides, and it becomes safe again.

The Lovecraftian atmosphere and the danger it presents are what completes the game and makes Dredge so entertaining. It provides a direct contrast to the chill vibes of exploring the world and fishing. It keeps the game’s pacing from veering off into boredom by segmenting your seafood searching with real danger, and it helps highlight the importance of your upgrades, as faster engines, brighter lights, and stronger hulls all help you survive the dangers lurking out there.

Water World

I mentioned Dredge’s charm before, and that charm extends to its world. The game will point you in a direction, but you are free to sail anywhere and more or less complete the game’s main quest tasks in almost any order. Each of the five regions has a distinct flavor, in its species of fish, dangers, aesthetics, and mini storylines.

One might have you sailing between cliffs with the danger of falling rocks while a one-eyed serpent hunts you. Another has you helping a scientist find a way to collect fish among a deadly reef guarded by a giant tentacled beast. A different region takes the form of a foggy jungle with shifting roots that constantly make it a changing maze, and even a volcanic region patrolled by a blind predator, whose hungry crying babies will draw her to you.

Each region has its own main quest, side quests, and puzzles to solve, and will require you to research and upgrade different gear. In addition to standard fish, every single species has at least one aberrant version to collect, and while catching them all isn’t required to complete the game. There is a tempting pokedex-like encyclopedia just begging to be filled out. It’s all compelling, enjoyable, and even addicting in the way that only simulation games manage to be.

I often found myself saying I’d take a break after just one more fish, as I searched the area for a particular species for its aberrant variants. I also really liked that almost every side quest rewards you in some way. There’s actually a lot of specialized gear to find by solving various mysteries around each region.

While the night holds random events of the spooky variety, you will find a more natural beauty as you explore in the daytime hours. Sometimes it’s a simple turtle paddling along. Other times it’s a pod of dolphins or orcas swimming alongside you, or a whale breaching the surface. I’ve even witnessed a metaphor for the game’s battle between the natural and the aberrant as a tentacle rose from the depths, only to be quickly dispatched by a white whale. Dredge oozes its charming atmosphere with every splash of water, and I really enjoyed that.

This Hull Has Holes

I wish it weren’t so, but the darkness isn’t the only thing harboring illusions. Like a siren that reveals itself to be a hideous monster right before the captain grinds his ship on the rocks, so too does Dredge sing a false song.

The game’s description makes it sound like a simulation game punctuated by eldritch horror. That’s what got my attention, and that is what I wanted. When I started playing Dredge, that is indeed, what it appeared to be. In the opening hour, the game taught me the fundamentals of fishing and my cargo hold. I was on board with it all.

It then began to give me special orders for specific species that I needed to find, as some species are specific to different regions, day or night, and different depths. I was picking up what the game was putting down and I was happy.

Finally, it introduced the dangers of the dark and the concept of aberrant fish to catch. As the game sent me out to fulfill this next order, well, let’s just say my rod was lined, baited, and standing tall. Then, the game immediately ceases to be that. It’s not a simulation game, but it wears the skin of one. It’s an exploration puzzle game to the bone, that simply uses fishing as the catalyst for its world design.

The main quest is about finding relics, and it so happens that the puzzles in your way usually require a few fish in the immediate area that said puzzle is in. Everything else is kind of tossed aside, it’s baffling how little the game is actually about fishing. You still do it, but more or less on the side.

Money honestly just falls into your lap as you sell the fish you have collected along the way while solving puzzles. At one point, I had thousands just from catching fish with my net as I sailed around looking for one specific fish for a puzzle. The shoals respawn every few in-game hours and seemingly in the same spots. You could in theory grind out the starting area and have enough money to buy everything.

I can tell you aberrant versions of fish are worth more, but I can’t tell you the specific price that any single fish was worth, because it never mattered. I never needed to go find valuable fish. It’s incredibly weird. The game has so many fishing rods, nets, crab pots, and various mechanics that all have to do with fishing, and it barely matters at all. You don’t buy the volcano rod to catch valuable volcanic fish. You buy the rod to catch the three to six specific volcanic fish you need for the quest line and then move on.

The cargo system, the fact that fish spoil. None of it truly matters in any meaningful way. The game makes a big deal about time and planning. Installing new equipment takes in-game hours, for example. But nothing in the game is on a timer, it’s all superficial.

You even have some odd game design, like the fact that you can turn on an accessibility option to never fail a fishing minigame. The thing is, you can’t fail them anyway. I tried. If you don’t push any buttons, it just reels the fish in slower but still completes it. You can also dredge up treasure that only a specific trader buys, but instead of needing to manage your cargo to sell it, you can shove it into storage at any dock. Open your storage at that trader and it will have magically teleported to you since your storage is universal across every dock in the world.

Dredge ended up being a different game than the one I thought I was going to play. I still ended up enjoying that game, but it’s not the game I wanted. I’m generally against judging a game based on what you want it to be, rather than what it is. But in this case, the game I wanted was the one Dredge pretended to be.

Verdict

I have a love/hate relationship with Dredge. I hate it because it made me WANT a simulation game about fishing while surviving against eldritch monsters, and that game does not exist. On the other hand, I love Dredge because it’s the closest thing to that game. It’s the biggest tease in that regard, I enjoy playing it, but I consistently wish it gave me more than it does.

It really feels like Dredge had a mid-development genre pivot from the admittedly niche idea that is closer to a simulation, into a more accessible adventure puzzle game with a fishing skin. I still enjoy Dredge for what it is, because it is indeed a solid adventure puzzle game with an excellent concept and atmosphere.

But the pain of what could have been wounds me with every fish I catch. The thing is, I still enjoy catching them, finding their aberrant versions, and reading their descriptions. I enjoy gathering materials for my upgrades and managing my cargo space, I just desperately wish it all mattered more than it does. Dredge does have two new modes planned, so hopefully one will cater to my palette a bit more.

Dredge also isn’t a very long game. I think I completed the main story in around six hours. I ended up playing a lot more, however, because I needed more footage for my video review, and because that fish encyclopedia ain’t gonna fill itself. When I’m finished it will be like I’m a Pokemon master, I’ll have caught them all. But instead of being the very best, I’ll just smell like fish and ramble about crab people eating our brains. The point is, that you can definitely squeeze a lot of playtime out of the game by pursuing all the side content.

Ultimately Dredge is a charming, atmospheric game with excellent exploration gameplay and clever puzzles punctuated by tense moments of fear and dread of what lurks in the dark. I just wish it leaned more into being the game it pretended to be with a larger focus on its simulation gameplay. Because in the end, Dredge makes you think you’re getting a fishing sim with horror elements when what you’re really getting is an enjoyable adventure puzzle game with tacked-on simulation elements.