If you’re anything like me – always wondering about the ultimate hug – it can be easy to get hung up on tentacled creatures (yes, I do mean cephalopod arms, you’re very smart for knowing the difference. Have a mackerel cookie and go sit in the quiet area). However, there is much variety in the unusual beings which live beneath the rippling surface of the vast oceans.
In Dredge, you play the part of a fisherman who awakes on the shore of The Minnows with no memory of your past, and no sign of the vessel which brought you to that place.
Fear not (at least, not yet), for the mayor arrives to offer you a new vessel at a very reasonable rate. For every fish you bring to the town fish monger, you’ll get your fair pay, less a small deduction against the cost of the boat’s purchase.
This isn’t a Tom Nook situation, the mayor isn’t interested in keeping you in debt in perpetuity, in fact, in as little as three days, you’ll be the sole owner of your very own fixer upper. Even before your debt is paid off, you’ll gain access to the shipwright who will sell you upgraded engines, fishing rods, trawling nets, and lights. Not only that, but once it is all yours, you’ll have the opportunity to expand the capacity of your craft in each of these categories, as well as the overall size of your cargo hold.
The hold is represented by an awkwardly shaped grid which you will need to carefully arrange to fit not only the essential workings of your ship, but your catch, any sunken treasures you dredge up (hah, said the thing!), upgrade materials, as well as any other cargo you may see fit to ferry around.
The method catching of your picean prey is pretty typical of fishing minigame fare: tap a button as a dial spins around and time your presses to the highlighted areas. Do well enough and you make your catch. Hooray.
I hate fishing minigames. I have hated them in so many different game and am often grateful when the rewards of such are not mandatory for completion of the narrative. I’ll look for mods to remove them entirely, I’ll beg someone to do it for me, and I’ll just give up and write the whole thing off as personally impossible if that’s the only option..
Maybe it’s the ADHD, maybe it’s my motor function issues, maybe my brain is being interfered with by an alien ray designed to make me struggle with them as a warning from piscine beings from across the cosmos to leave their distant, digital kin in peace.
With that in mind, you may wonder why I would bother even picking up a game where the whole concept is 8-12 hours of fishing minigames tied together with a cosmic horror mystery, ill-fated lovers, and an occasional squelching package delivery service plot.
If you answered “cosmic horror mystery”. You get a (probably not cursed) gold star I found in a shipwreck, one stormy night, just as the fog rolled in and the reaching, shimmering, crimson lights attempted to take me in their haunted embrace from out the dark. While the fish in my hold seemed suddenly to be carrying more than a strong odour and damp regret at the decisions which brought them to this assured end.
Also, it was pointed out to me that there are accessibility settings to make the fishing more manageable. From the options menu on the title screen (or at any time during play on the pause screen), you can go into the accessibility settings and turn on a “relaxed fishing mode”. If you don’t press anything, the fish will be very slowly reeled in. If you take a stab at the quick time event anyway and press at the correct time, you’ll put a big dent in the distance between your prey and your reel. Meanwhile failed attempts will stop you dead for a few seconds. And that… could get dangerous.
You see, time in this game runs on Super Hot rules. Move the boat, clock starts running. Do some fishing, tick tock. Install a new engine, that’s four hours you’ll not see again.
Day dawns at 6am and the ocean seems relatively safe for maybe the next 13 hours. As the strain of your solo sea scavenging begins to take its toll, the thick fog rolls in and cloaks the small, jagged rocks which invite you to fall and die, like the sun’s light.
With the lamps of the early game, you’ll need to move very slowly around most harbours as treacherous rocks will only be rendered at all as the weak light touches them. In fact it doesn’t matter how good your night vision is, or how well you know the area. Some rock only come out in the dark of night and will only be visible once your faint lights touch them.
Without a lot of upgrading, your hull won’t take more than a couple of hits, and if a crash is hard enough, you could be taking multiple hits at once.
Damage to your hull is marked as an unusable spot in your already limited grid. If that despicable red X is over your only rod, you won’t even get any prompts during the catching minigame, you’ll just have to wait a painfully long time to reel anything in.
If it’s on one of your engines, you could be stuck limping along at low speed on one engine, and just maybe, further out to sea that you might be able to safely make it to port before sunset.
Perhaps worst of all, if you had a precious treasure or even a fish in the spot where the breach occurred, that item is gone for good.
This fragility inspires careful rudder work and a weather eye on the all to swiftly passing hours. Even so, a very reasonable fear of what moves in the dark will not avail you when the fishmonger presses you to seek more elusive prey for his special orders. There are some deep sea dwellers, which only can only be sought under the pale light of the moon.
You’re warned early on that the night is perilous, but still, the big bucks which will grant you greater freedom upon the waves, are only given to those who brave such dark waters.
An extra hour here or there isn’t so bad. Soon after midnight though, whether through exhaustion, painful solitude, or unspeakable forces beyond the comprehension of fleshy mortals, you may start to see things. Are there moving lights over there? Above or… perhaps below the water? Where are you? You were sure you were so much closer to port, but did you get turned around in the dark? Your eye (just the one, which sits beneath the clock at the top of the screen) darts wildly back and forth in panic, unsure of what is reel and what is or imagined.
I won’t spoil it, but things get weird out there and I do not recommend it if you value your vessel or your life.
Along your journey, you’ll catch many different types of fish, each will be catalogued in your encyclopaedia. Incomplete entries will tell you in which regions to search, what manner of equipment is required, and even the time of day they can be found. If you’re a completionist, there’s a satisfying amount of sea-life to seek. Including rare and exotic specimens and even the twisted aberrations.
Speaking of which. Every now and then you’ll be fishing a well stocked spot, pulling up minnow after minnow. It’s not until one comes up with a few too many eyes; pulsating, bulbous protuberances; or teeth where they’ve no right to be, that you start to gain an understanding of the sickness beneath these waves.
Each entry in your encyclopaedia has a corresponding aberration or three. While these will fetch a greater price from the fishmonger, they may also have uses in other ways (which you’ll have to find out for yourself).
Along your journey you’ll find various books to read. From your onboard bookshelf you can select an unread edition which your character slowly works through as you go about the usual business of travelling and fishing. Each volume unlocks a bonus for things like fish stock depletion, better deals in shops, and increased movement speed.
Most books are given as rewards for completing missions for folk you meet along the way, so it’s worth checking your quest log (here labelled as “pursuits”) to see if that belt buckle you just found is someone’s long lost memento before you try to sell it off to the trader for a few bucks.
It’s all well and good that your character gets some reading time in, but if you, the player, want some stories of your own, you’re not restricted to the peculiar denizens of the islands and/or fellow folk who float along who you pass along the way. Throughout the world a number of messages in bottles can be found bobbing in the brine. Each combining into a potentially missable mystery of their own. In fact, in my playthrough I had seen one of the game’s two endings before finding the final piece of this tale.
The art in Dredge is very reminiscent of games like Dishonoured or Disco Elysium characters are painted with thick brush strokes, and often in a cold and bleak colour palette, with somewhat exaggerated features. The world at large is often similarly stormy, and the weather seems to worsen as you progress through the narrative. That said, the sun rises are quite beautiful, and clearer days do much to lift the mood upon the wide ocean.
When the world grows darker, and in such areas which lie permanently swaddled in gloom, you may catch sight of the beauty beneath the tides. Gently waving sea weeds, eerily glowing corals, and even the ominous, ruby glow of volcanic fissures which scar the ocean floor like frozen bolts lightning. This is a strangely beautiful world.
Dredge is a fascinating tale which is well told and deeply engaging, even for those of us who usually detest the mechanics of the average fishing minigame. While it may seem like a shorter experience at around 8-12 hours, the core narrative never outstayed its welcome. Once both possible endings have been experienced, I think you’ll agree that the game is exactly as long as it needs to be.
If you’re aiming for 100% completion you’ll have plenty to keep you busy for probably in the region of 30+ hours as you fill every encyclopaedia entry; complete every quest; research every rod, net, crab pot, and engine; as well as finding every hidden item scattered around the many and various islands.
The sea is calling collect. Will you accept the charges?
Dredge is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5|4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Pros:
- Fascinating story
- Accessible core mechanic
- Beautiful artwork
- Fun upgrade system
Cons:
- Pause menu is a little cluttered
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