DREDGE
Captain your fishing trawler to explore a collection of remote isles, and their surrounding depths, to see what lies below. Sell your catch to the locals and complete quests to learn more about each area’s troubled past. Outfit your boat with better equipment to trawl deep-sea trenches and navigate to far-off lands, but keep an eye on the time. You might not like what finds you in the dark…
Explore the Islands & Discover their Secrets
Starting from your new home in the remote archipelago, ‘The Marrows’, take to the water and scour the depths for curious collectables and over 125 deep sea denizens. Explore each area while completing quests and visiting neighbouring island regions – each with their own unique opportunities, inhabitants, and secrets.
Dredge the Depths
Someone wants you to dig up the past, but can you trust them and will it ever be enough?
Beware the Fog
Danger is everywhere, so watch for sharp rocks and shallow reefs, though the biggest threats of all lurk within the fog that cloaks the night-time seas…
Game Features:
- Unravel a Mystery: Captain your fishing trawler across a collection of remote islands, each with its own inhabitants to meet, wildlife to discover, and stories to unearth.
- Dredge the Depths: Scour the sea for hidden treasures and complete quests to gain access to strange new abilities
- Study Your Craft: Research special equipment and upgrade your boat’s capabilities to gain access to rare fish and valuable deep-sea curios.
- Fish to Survive: Sell your discoveries to the locals to learn more about each area, and upgrade your boat to reach even more secluded locations.
- Fight the Unfathomable: Strengthen your mind and use your abilities to survive trips out on the water after dark.
Steam User 497
I can highly recommend Dredge to any one who suffers from gamer apathy or has trouble getting hooked in by games. Though simple the core game play loop is fun an interactive, while the story pulls the player in to the eldritch mystery that actually makes you have to problem solve more for the story then any of the game play challenges/mechanics. Overall only complaint is there is not more Dredge to be played after finishing the game.
Steam User 526
30% Exploration
30% Fishing Mini-games
30% Inventory Management
10% Worrying about the Dark
If that sounds appealing, then I couldn't recommend this game more.
Steam User 514
I'm really enjoying DREDGE. I love horror stories, but I have a hard time with traditional horror video games. The immersion can be too much and I become anxious to the point where it's not enjoyable. DREDGE does a good job of balancing it's spooky atmosphere and interesting story with a good mix of urgency and relaxation. I like that I'm free to enjoy the game at a slow, safe pace. Getting caught out at sea at night isn't an instant death sentence but there's still enough spookiness and some OH GOD WHAT IS THAT? moments that deliver adrenaline in a slow drip that a cowardly gamer like myself can really appreciate. I'm looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds.
Steam User 990
I'm a little mixed on DREDGE.
I beat the game in three sittings and had an incredible amount of fun with the first two. The core mechanics have great promise and exploring felt extremely rewarding. Unfortunately, it was the third sitting that really made it impossible to ignore the game's shortcomings.
DREDGE's issues are almost entirely economic, which is strange because the first few hours of the game feel so incredibly tight. Your storage, money, and time are all incredibly scarce and so doing anything that promises to unlock more of them feels extremely good. Catching fish means money. Dredging items means more ship upgrades. More money and resources means more engines and lights and speed and safety and cargo and all of that means even more fish. The gameplay loop feels incredible.
There is a hard point where this feeling goes away, however.
The game is split into five separate general areas, and by the time I was done with the third one my boat was all but completely upgraded. I had long since hit a point where I no longer needed money, which meant that I practically never fished anymore. For a while this was okay because there was more to explore, and exploring is my favorite thing to do in games.
In the early part of the game there was a lot to explore with two separate towns in the first area. The seas felt wide and dangerous with multiple characters and several sidequests to reward you and keep you busy. The second area similarly had a unique town with new characters, new fish, and a huge monster that the entire area was built around.
I was expecting the same of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th areas, but I was disappointed. Instead of new townships, the player is greeted with the same Traveling Merchant over and over. There are no more towns to speak of, nor are there any more sidequests. The main quest is structured almost identically across all of the remaining areas, and once your engine hits a middling speed nothing in the game will ever pose a threat to you again. I looked up the monsters that appear in this game and found that in 11 hours of play I'd somehow missed 80% of them. What's more, I can't fathom being stupid enough to ever encounter one, let alone to die in this game. There's simply no tension because your boat is built 60% of the way through the game.
Once your boat is built, there's nothing to work towards. Not only is there no fear of the unknown, the unknown is a little repetitive. The only "side quest" pursuit outside of the Marrows are three identical robed figures asking for specific fish. There are one or two unique things like adopting a lost dog, but the rewards for these quests are absolutely paltry.
That brings up another point: The game has several numerical issues regarding the value of various items and upgrades that anyone could've noticed in 10 minutes looking at the design spreadsheets.
A huge amount of rewards in the game are dredged treasure. Dredged treasure is unbelievably worthless after the first two hours, get the game keeps handing it to you. Only one shopkeeper in the world buys the treasure, and he buys it at a price that makes spending that limited cargo space on fish the better option 100% of the time. You only pull up one treasure per dredge, but you can get upwards of five fish of a similar price from a single fishing spot. I have no idea what the dev team was thinking with this.
There are upgrades you can get with dredged up materials (separate from treasures). This mechanic is excellent. It's only flaw is that meticulous players will be done with this halfway through the game.
Then there are upgrades that can be unlocked through "research parts", little items rarely rewarded through quests or found randomly. Almost every one of these needed to be reworked. The research skill trees frequently cost huge amounts to get worse upgrades that take up more valuable space in your boat. Huge, mediocre fishing rods take several unlocks to even reach, meanwhile the best engine in the game is on its own tree and be unlocked immediately. What's worse, you have no idea how good or bad an unlock is before going for it because they're all whited out.
Worst of all, research parts are highly RNG-based. You are supposed to farm them while dredging for items. But here's the thing: Once you've upgraded your boat and realized treasure is worthless because you have more money than you'll ever need... why would you dredge? Ever? It's literally crazy that side quests reward you with a single $50 ring (worth 1/4th of a good mid-game fish) instead of giving you more research parts.
I had such a good time with the first 7 hours of DREDGE. It would be unfair to call it "unfinished", but I'd also say that I think this game would really benefit from another 6 months or so of number-tweaking and enough time to add one or two more towns' worth of content into the game. Hell, the lagoon level already has a town modeled in. Just get some more character artwork and spend another four weeks programming and you're set, right?
Also I guess I'll mention that this game's story is extremely stock-standard for the genre. It's not bad, but if you've ever encountered a single Lovecraft-style "horrors in the deep" fishing town story before, there is absolutely nothing here that will surprise you. You're playing for the fish.
Steam User 200
At the time of this review, I am 7.7 hours into the game, and that means I am barely into the story and quest-lines.
I love the artwork.
I love the music and sound effects.
I love that I can play in short sessions and not feel like I won't remember where I was when I get back.
I love the slow burn, and build up of dread as the sun starts to go down, but I just have to try for one more fish or one more piece of scrap metal.
The economy is tight- but not unbalanced. If you are low on cash for upgrades or repairs you can go close to home to fish or throw out crab pots and make money at a decently fast pace.
I don't feel rushed into doing anything- the quests have no timers, I finish one whenever and the next one unlocks.
I can explore and get to know the map at my own pace.
End up smashing my boat to smithereens? The game lets me load up my last save or start over again- my choice.
You can turn off the scary stuff if you want to. I don't want to- the encounters add to the creepy Lovecraftian atmosphere. But if you don't like jump scares, or you have a younger child who wants to watch you play or wants to try it themselves- it's a nice option to be able to turn off the really freaky scary stuff.
The game has some good accessibility options, though the color palette the game uses *may* be an issue for people with certain forms of color-blindness.
The story and dialogue is all in text with no voice-overs, so it should be quite playable for Deaf and HoH gamers, though you will miss some subtle audio clues or prompts before monster attacks or wildlife encounters.
The story is delivered in small bits- no lengthy walls of text to deal with. It helps to click through every dialogue option, but they are all fairly short, easy to read and using language that doesn't require an advanced college degree.
The puzzles vary from easy to slightly challenging- trying to get things to fit neatly in your inventory or at shrines. But none have been brain-melters.
It runs really well on an older gaming laptop (with a discrete GPU), an older mid-range desktop, and a beefy newer desktop. I suspect it would run smoothly on a toaster, but I don't have one to test it on. As long as you have a dedicated discrete GPU, and you meet minimum specs (though I always recommend exceeding them, even just a little). No idea how it will run on a laptop with only a integrated chipset.
The only thing that bothers me is how quickly the day cycle runs- day to night a little too quickly. So you'll have to really think about how long fishing or dredging takes if you don't want the nighttime stress and madness to hit you. Remember to dock and sleep to stay sane.
Really enjoying the game, and I can and will whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who wants a game that isn't high action, is a slow-burn kind of game, requires a little brain power, but isn't overly complex, and that has a really great immersive atmosphere that lets the dread settle in slowly and deeply.
(quick edit to fix some typos only- no changes to the text.)
I just finished The Pale Reach DLC, and reviewed it, if you care to read it:
(21 February, 2024)
Steam User 399
Dredge touts itself as an Eldritch Horror Fishing game. A day-to-night adventure across the seas where danger crawls and stalks you in the dark. In reality, it's more of a casual day on the lake with a few spooky bits waving to you from shore. It's all competently executed, though you may find the thin plot and calm gameplay not worth the full asking price.
The game's loop has you driving your boat from point to point, at some you briefly interact with the residents of the islands you visit. At others, you do some basic fishing minigames which, to their credit, aren't nearly as annoying as fishing is in some other games. After you stack your suspiciously Tetris-like hold with fish and materials, you return to a dock, sell it off, and maybe purchase an upgrade or two. While simple, this was enough to hold my attention for the first half of the game - especially as the game drip feeds hints that there's more going on under the waves than just fish.
Unfortunately it's the back half of the game that I found wanting. Upgrading your boat is over far too quick and I found there were few meaningful upgrades in the back half. Even the ones that looked like giant leaps, such as a special fishing upgrade that tripled my "fishing speed" stat, barely felt like much of an improvement. Once the upgrades fall flat, it takes the wind out of the sails of the rest. Without anything to upgrade, I passed up most fishing spots since I didn't need the cash or materials. Sidequests became chores with rewards that didn't offer anything new. Toss in that the last set of islands features an extremely annoying combination of narrow passages, critters that hunt you down, and an effect that slows your boat to a crawl, I was happy when the game ended.
The horror of the game isn't really there, either. Instead of outright horror, it's more of a mildly irritating anxiety - like finishing up shopping ten minutes before the store closes. You're never really in any danger and when a big fish does leap out, it smacks your hull, steals a few fish, and necessitates a short trip back to a dock to pay a tiny fee for repairs. It's not dreadful; it's just annoying. The plot itself is fairly predictable, though it has the characteristic melancholy gravitas of Lovecraft, so I can't fault it too much.
Overall, it's an enjoyable six to eight hours, with a less enjoyable two more hours somewhere in there. I'm not sure I can recommend it for the full price, but it's worth playing if you just want to chill and fish for a few nights.
Steam User 286
FIsh tetris and sea horrors
Pros:
+ Fish tetris
+ Fishing is fun, i like the minigames
+ Plenty of fish to search for and complete your fish notebook
+ Creepy sea horrors and visions
+ Great graphics
+ Great music
+ Great optimization
Cons:
- Thalassophobes beware
- A handful of quests are timed without telling you they are