Dredge Review
Discover the Thrill of Fishing in a Corrupted World and Unravel the Mystery Behind Dredge's Lovecraftian Force - A Gamer's Review
I know, I know. I’ve been waffling on this subject for a while now, but I’m genuinely curious. For those of you who are reading this! Hi, you’re awesome by the way!
I wanted to know if recording these articles as individual podcasts would be something that you might be interested in.
I could upload the audio at the top, or I could create a new podcast section entirely. I’m not sure what that does, but it’s an option. Let me know in the comments what you think!
Atmospheric horror fishing? Sign me up!
Lately I’ve been playing Dredge.
If you’ve not heard of Dredge its a game about fishing in a world where the fish are corrupted by some Lovecraftian force.
Why Theming is Important
For me Dredge is a prime example of why theming in games matters so much. Ostensibly its a game about fishing. That’s what you do. You fish, you buy and maintain crab pots, and you upgrade your boat with money that you make from fishing.
On the surface the games mechanics are incredibly simple. If fishing was all the game was I would have no interest in playing it.
Don’t get me wrong the systems are fun. They are all polished nicely. The system is robust enough to be interesting on its own. Perhaps it has more to do with me as a gamer, but I like a game with a mystery. I need a reason to be pretending to be a fisherman.
Steering the Player With A Mystery
I feel like games are the perfect medium for mysteries, because they allow the player to be involved in a way where they can touch, and examine all the clues. They can let players travel back in time and see things exactly the way they were before the mystery started. They can exist in a world with a mystery and see the consequences, and test them! Games like Outer Wilds, and Return of the Obra Dinn come to mind.
In these games the mystery itself is more explicit. In Dredge the mystery is merely what drives the player forward. It sets the stage for the players curiosity while fishing.
The game throws twists at you enough to keep you interested. Some fish you catch are corrupted. If you stay up too late your sanity drops, leaving you to fend against phantoms of the deep.
When safely docked, Dredge gives you story in a Visual Novel format. The NPC’s you interact with are all appropriately dirty, and mistrusting. You engage with them through small dialogue boxes, where they inevitably need you to fish up something in order to move forward with the story.
Simple, and Finely Polished
These missions are often quite fun. They keep you engaging with the system, and encourage you to continue upgrading your boat. After all you can’t fish in the mangrove until you’ve bought the mangrove attachment for your fishing rod.
This is good for progression because the upgraded line can catch fish that sell for more money, and it drives the players capitalistic sidequest of obtaining the nicest ship their money can buy.
Adding to the Atmosphere
As you complete pieces of the main story one of the NPC’s also grants you Lovecraftian powers in order to make your life easier out on the open water. Its gated in a very nice way works well with the story.
I’ve not totally finished the game yet, but I’ve really enjoyed it.
However, there are some things about the game I don’t like.
Criticism and Room For Improvement
Sometimes fish the NPC’s need can be hard to find. In Dredge different fish can be found in different areas. The distinction between these areas is often clear, but not always. You might have just missed turning one corner despite all the water looking the same. The NPC’s are often not much help in finding these fish either. If you’ve caught the fish before it might tell you what water type the fish can be found in. Though if you haven’t, you are out of luck.
I had a particularly difficult time trying to find catfish. I really just got lucky from having a fishing net auto-catch one for me. Though that was only after wandering around the same area for 10 minutes trying to find one.
The other thing I dislike about the game are the messages (messagi?) in bottles. I am not a fan of written logs in games. For me the golden standard is Outer Wilds. A game which is almost entirely reading, yet I played through the whole thing.
The reason for this was that all the text in Outer Wilds served two purposes. The text was always there to increase the players understanding of the game world, and lead them in the path of the next clue.
This is what makes any dialogue written or otherwise worthwhile for a player.
The problem in Dredge is that the hidden bottle collectables, from what I can tell, have very little to do with the players progression in the main story mechanically. Everything happens through the Visual Novel format. As a result I feel no need to spend time reading these messages, because I would rather get to the next story checkpoint.
You don’t have to have EVERY piece of text the player reads steeped in this level of double meaning. But having the information source be at least somewhat important tells the player that it is worth their time to engage with a system.
I’m excited to finish Dredge and can’t wait to play it again! Give it a shot if you haven’t played it yet.
Check Out Nick’s: Bluesky | Steam Curator | Instagram | Linktree | Itch | Twitter |
Chat with the writers themselves on the Bits N’ Pixels Discord Server!