The one time I tried sea fishing (under invitation), I added more to the ocean than I caught. The few times I looked up from the side of that boat (or the back of my eyelids) the views were nice, and that’s the best thing I can say about my experience. I prefer games for my fishing since it lacks the smell, having to touch them, the experience of adding your breakfast to the port-side bow, and having to go back to land to finally breathe for the first time in hours.

DREDGE is a fishing adventure title with a twist to the fable we covered last time in Moonglow Bay, as this time the weird fish are angry. The old wives’ tales are true and Captain Cutler is dead, so no one wants to go out on the big blue wet thing. The truth is you don’t see me jumping head-first into many horror games because I am what we delicately call a big girl’s blouse, and I run away screaming to the nearest safe place the first opportunity I get. DREDGE isn’t horror but it does intentionally try to play with you psychologically.

One of the central mechanics is based on panic and what that will do to you in the wrong place at the wrong time. Particularly at night and in the dark, you’ll slowly build up a sense of paranoia as displayed by a shifty eyeball in front of your clock. In deep waters that panic will manifest itself in the form of a similar boat to yours following something in the water with a bit of chromatic aberration. Do I want to find out what that something is? Does the pope defecate in the woods? Do you want to put your hand around the U-bend in your bog? No, exactly.

The downside of the panic mechanic is that the time scale in a day is so short you can get through an entire day in about 5 minutes of fishing or traveling. Keep in mind that these are the central cores of DREDGE: fishing and adventure. Either through the adventure side quests by dredging something from the many shipwrecks or by capturing specific fish, you gain gear for your RPG-style upgrades. In fact, there are two tech trees to advance through with an additional shop to buy the additions to your trawler. With the horrors of the deep blue and the short time frame, days may go by rather quickly.

Over the two weeks of playing DREDGE, I think I’ve played a lot slower than is intended because (of course) I was trying to make lots of money from fishing and get as many upgrades as possible. There are big angry fish out there that want to kill every known fisherman, and I’m the only one “brave” (read stupid) enough to go out there and hallucinate lovely big rocks that pop in three feet from my bow. It isn’t just the fish that are your impending death, the fog of night and lack of sleep by the end of the day can produce some difficult moments.

I think the reason for playing a bit more contemplatively is that I was captured by the story and gameplay. You’re constantly told through text boxes espousing fear and dread of what happened to every other fisherman. As such, when that chromatic aberration, controller vibration, and those bright eyes and gills burn through the fog and deep waters, it is tense. A lot of great work goes into creating that psychological aspect, and unlike many horror games that get this wrong a lot of the time, you can’t fight back. Your only recourse is to run and try to keep fishing.

I mentioned it a second ago, but the entire story is told through text boxes and lots of reading. It bears mentioning because it is my experience and I’m trying to give feedback no matter how tiring some might find hearing about dyslexia and gaming. Despite that DREDGE does a lot of good. There absolutely is a lot of what I’ve previously called “fluff” text which is expository story elements to build up the world without greatly advancing knowledge in or for gameplay, but what is important is highlighted.

The important story elements, gameplay tutorials, or just positive/negative reinforcements are highlighted in separate colors to pull on your eyes. You can also change those colors individually so you know that emphasis, which is typically in a dark teal color, is yellow or that the deep purple of Important information is lime green. There are a few accessibility options including making holds into toggles, motion smoothing, turning the chromatic aberration off, and making the fishing mini-game more relaxed. The final one that seems insignificant would be text speed, but animated text or fonts in motion while reading can sometimes be distracting. This is great.

Towards the later game, some of those quests can get a little “oh why me?” as you’re asked to find specific fish that you’ve yet to catch. One example was the Airman, a crashed squadron leader caught in this Bermuda Triangle of muted colors and bitey fish, who asked for a catfish. I didn’t know he was asking for a catfish as everything else he asked for I had already caught and the outlines included the names. This is where the in-game encyclopedia is both useful and a little annoying to handle. It gives you the outline, what rods/components you need to catch them, and where and when to catch them.

Unfortunately, I didn’t work this out until about an hour after I’d repeatedly gone out in search of whatever this weird fish was. It also didn’t help that I’d gone elsewhere to catch some more aberrations of nature and upgrade a bit more. Extending to new areas put the pages of the encyclopedia onto the newest fish and fish most recently caught. This led to a few minutes of frustratingly flipping through that as I had to work out how the pages would flip. It makes sense eventually, but the arrows are curved to suggest the page will turn.

There are a couple of “problems” like this throughout DREDGE, such as the map. On the one hand, the gameplay aspect of this is for you to demonstrate an ability in displaying map-reading skills and navigating the ocean, which I think is done relatively well. Either through DREDGE‘s draw-distance or general fog to limit your vision, it is sometimes difficult to see many landmarks and you have to focus instead on your small compass at the top of the screen. You’re supposed to be watching for several things: Angry fish, fishable fish, land you might hit, and dredge-able treasures/materials.

All the gameplay elements work reasonably well together, though I think 1 or 2 creature comforts might improve select aspects. For example, when you are exploring the claustrophobic Twisted Strand (a marshy swamp) and Gale Cliffs (a cliff-based archipelago) it can be difficult to see which narrow passage you should enter next, as your boat icon on the map almost covers one-quarter of the square you’re on. Being able to zoom in or remove your boat would make your map properly useful in that case. There isn’t a lot to complain about, but these small issues balloon into titanic problems sometimes.

Ultimately, DREDGE is a sometimes colorful and fun fishing adventure but is oftentimes an excellent psychological horror based around the somewhat fantastical nightmares of the sea. It isn’t a breathtaking or bold new step into adventure titles based around fishing. However, it is a great one nonetheless, even if your time fishing is rather limited by the repulsiveness of the ocean.

It is also accessible in several ways it needed to be and isn’t too difficult allowing for great slow pacing, and quite often charming in its oppressiveness. New Zealand-based Black Salt Games have made a fishing title that I’m sure I’ll still be talking about by the end of the year.

A PC review copy of DREDGE was provided by Team17 for the purposes of this review.

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Dredge

$24.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Such a great collection of art styles.
• A solid set of mechanics that make hours of play easy to fly by.
• That psychological horror theming surrounding you at every moment.
• Some great accessibility.

Cons

• Minor gameplay elements could be improved/refined.