When I was writing up my review of Dave the Diver, originally I was writing it as an indie title. But then I paused. I looked it up and deleted those parts that described it as indie. This game however is an indie one, which also happened to have DLC content in Dave the Diver and features the sea, but this one.. well I could have written this for October.

Dredge was developed by Black Salt games in New Zealand and published by Team17. You can get it on most if not all platforms, I was playing it on my Switch 2. This means I didn’t have achievements but I do love the freedom of where I can play it that comes with my Switch.

Originally I got the demo which I ended up enjoying but then waited till I saw a sale, that sale came within the month of completing the demo where I then got it and its DLC.

Dredge starts out not too suspicious. You play as a fisherman who’s taking a job as an angler for the coastal town of Greater Marrow. But as you arrive you get lost in fog and crash on the rocks in front of a large lighthouse. You survive but your boat is wrecked. The mayor gives you a new boat and you can pay it off by selling the fish you catch. Very simple, you get a quest or two helping you find out how to play, catch fish, sell them to the fishmonger, keep doing that and get new gear so you can get other types of fish in different regions like coastal, shallows and Oceanic plus you can get improvements for your new boat so it can move faster. A nice relaxing fishing game.

But…

The mayor had given you one piece of advice, do not stay out after dark and when the fog rolls in. As you move and fish, the clock moves. Maybe you heeded the don’t stay out at night advice, things start to get dark and the tone starts to change, the music changes and a sense of dread starts to fill you. A symbol below the clock showing an eye getting more and more panicked. Rocks seem to literally appear out of nowhere, only visible thanks to the light on your boat. And worryingly, you see what looks like a copy of your ship out beyond the rocks in the bay, yet you’re the only ship out here right?

The quests even force you to get something that only appears at night, so eventually you must brave the dark and fog as that music fills you more with a sense of dread, and what was that below your ship?

Then eventually as you’re fishing, you catch… something that isn’t right, that’s.. off.. that is.. an aberration.

That’s right Dredge isn’t a comfy cozy fishing game, it pretends to be one, but it’s really a cosmic horror game! and one that does the superb job of just making everything feel uneasy even before you suddenly have to run for your life from something.

The game features survival elements with item management as eventually you begin to get quests that send you on to other regions with different biomes, your fish catching required to gain more equipment and to pay for the upgrades to your ship using material you find by dredging up old wrecks.

Each of these different sections all have new hazards and a small story that will lead to the overall one. I would often heed until very late in the game the don’t stay out at night rule but others may be more adventurous. New nightmares growing in the back of my mind. The long journeys between the main islands filling me with dread. What happens if I’m out too late at night? seeing a large group of spines start to surround me only to break off as I reached shallower water.

So yes I very much enjoyed Dredge and highly recommend it. The games 2 main DLC add some nice features. The Pale Reach adds a southern section with ice creating another self-contained area with some nice rewards and new challenges. While the Iron Rig is focused on an oil rig in the northern section. However while Pale Reach was self contained Iron Rig creates new challenges are rewards for the already existing areas. This gives some good upgrades to your ship and good reasons to go back to those sections you probably already completed. Though both won’t take too long to complete if you are doing these after you completed the main game.

I did consider holding this over till October as the horror and unnerving aspect of the game would have been ideal for my Halloween specials but I was enjoying this so much I felt I wanted to get this review to you now. Once again, highly recommended and the dlc is good. Just… well we live on an island up here. Might make you a bit nervous when going away and looking down at the sea, what could be looking back up at you.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮