Review: "Dredge"

Nadia Thorne (Producer), Joel Mason (Writer/Programmer), Alex Ritchie (Artist), David Mason (Composer), “Dredge”, Black Salt Games/Team17, New Zealand (Aotearoa), 2024.

I’ve never really been a computer game player. I have a finite number of fingers and a limited concentration span, so trying to get Link across an unending landscape is pretty much a full-time occupation for me, let alone having to despatch enemies that pop up unannounced every blood moon. Games like “Street Fighter” and “Mortal Combat” are, for me, simply exercises in button-mashing, and are strictly a workout for the controller rather than its operator. “Metal Gear Solid” always seemed too self-important and cool-fixated for me, and any time a Mario Brother entered the mix I just turned my attention to more grown-up matters. There was a time when I was pre-occupied with “Twisted Metal”, but that’s definitely an outlier. I like games that are a bit think-y with lots of puzzles and atmosphere, things like the “Myst” franchise and “Silent Hill”, and I think I’ve found another game to join this list in “Dredge”.

Like with the movies, Lovecraft is making inroads into the gaming arena. I mean, sure, there are games out there that are explicitly channelling the Mythos and with Lovecraft’s name on the lid, but there are others where the cosmic weirdness is not obviously stated and in which the elements take some digging to unearth. This game is one of those.

“Dredge” is advertised as a “fishing and survival horror” game and this is a pretty accurate summation. The horror here is cosmic in nature and based in thalassophobia, or fear of the deep and the unknown things which might be hidden there. In approaching this game, it seemed a pretty obvious choice for me because I am terrified of things lurking beneath the waves: show me a sunken ship slowly emerging from out of the gloom and I’m gone. In this game you often encounter rocky shoals where massive cargo boats have come unstuck: sailing above these wrecks is an exercise in creeping horror for me. If you feel likewise, you might like this game as well.

The wrecks and the fathomless depths are not the only thing to worry an erstwhile fisherman either. There are places in the “Dredge” world inhabited by monstrously huge fishy beings whose only pleasure is trashing you and your doughty craft. I was warned while visiting the region known as Gale Cliffs – an otherwise homey little Scandinavian coastal settlement – that there was a big fish harrying seacraft in the vicinity, but I pooh-poohed the notion of having to take extra care. How big and bad could it be? Not only was there a terrifyingly dangerous fish out there in the fjord, it was unbelievably huge and bent on my destruction. This is a pure Lovecraftian narrative waiting to be uncorked.

In another region called Stellar Basin, there is an equally terrifying encounter waiting. This region is a subaqueous sinkhole surrounded by a ring of small tropical islands. As you head inside the atoll and blithely attempt to cross over to the other side, you become acutely aware that there’s a bottomless hole beneath you and that it’s inhabited by a kraken-sized thing that spends its time waiting for idiots to mess about in boats overhead. Boats like yours.

The basic premise of the game is that you are new to the region overseen by the twin settlements of Greater and Lesser Marrow. The previous fisherman disappeared under shady circumstances and here you are ready to pick up where they left off. The two towns are across a small nest of islands from each other and Greater Marrow is the site of the Lighthouse which is your best source of navigating this reality (its light can be seen no matter where you are on this planet). Your main occupation is to catch fish: shoals of these can be spotted as you cruise about and catching them requires that you amass the right equipment to match the specifics of each species, thereafter playing a quick mini-game to secure them. Once you get a full hold, you have to go see the Fishmonger who assesses your catch and pays you in the coin of the realm. This you can spend at the Shipwright’s store upon fixing your boat or upgrading your gear to catch more and more diverse types of fish. Simple. Occasionally, you come across floating remnants from other travellers, flotsam washed off unluckier ships than yours: some of this material can be used to fashion better equipment, by developing skill trees and research objectives, while other stuff is of interest to the Trader who lives in Lesser Marrow. Then there are stranger objects.

A slow narrative unfolds as you begin to work for the Collector who lives on Blackstone Island to the south of the Marrows. By reading many serendipitously-discovered books and notes in floating bottles, we learn that this fellow went to sea with his wife, discovered a Lovecraftian tome and summoned a subaqueous horror which – whoops! – killed his beloved. Now he wants you to comb the region for his wife’s lost relics so that he can summon her back from the grave. You know, a normal, everyday sort of hobby. In return, he offers you magical assistance in the form of spells that enable you to put the mockers on some of the nasty fishy things that get in your way. Be careful though: casting these rituals scores deep marks upon your soul and the insanity meter maxes out pretty quickly when this happens.

Yes, there is a sanity gauge. If you go without sleep, travel by night, get attacked by monsters, or cast spells, you start to freak out. The world starts to look a bit weird, rocky reefs appear where they aren’t supposed to be and then sea-monsters start to home in on you. These include massive tentacles reaching up from below or super-fast Great White sharks with glowing mouths that rocket out of nowhere, amongst others. Of course, if you’re completely thalassophobic, the normal things that happen during the day are equally concerning, like lightning strikes hitting the waves, whales breaching unexpectedly off the starboard bow, waterspouts, or unexpected rock shoals. A good night’s sleep will soon see you right, though.

A common complaint on the review boards for this game is that the repetition of fishing and catch-selling is a bit monotonous, but I didn’t find it too bad. Yes, occasionally you find yourself needing to fish hard to earn the cash for your next crab pot upgrade, but it’s never too onerous – nowhere near “World of Warcraft” levels of grinding anyway. Each fish species has its own wrinkles – best time of day for catching; best type of line or net; best regional distribution – and so, if you’re into these strategic types of hunts, it’s really no biggie. Every now and then, you bring up a mutated creature, a deviation from the standard species type and you start to enter a world where the Fishmonger begins to demand these aberrations for select clientele, muttering in his musings about what they taste like and what ‘effects’ they will have. Most of these twisted fish are particularly squicky, so this part of your story breeds quite a lot of unease.

Your narrative winds between a number of locations each environmentally unique. Gale Cliffs is northern European, Stellar Reach is tropical, Devil’s Spine is a volcanic archipelago and the Twisted Strand is a series of mangrove-choked islands. The local fish are unique and require adaptations to your gear and there’s any number of side-quests and sub-plots to keep you busy. Of course, the overriding narrative arc gives you good reasons to discover these locales as well, so it’s not as if you ever feel like you have time on your hands. There are two downloadable content packs (DLCs) – “The Pale Reach”, a polar region, and “The Iron Rig”, in which a greedy corporation builds an oil rig that causes horrible environmental destruction across the world – which extend the gameplay without butchering the original story. I played with both packs running and can heartily recommend them.

Everything barrels towards two conclusions, depending upon how you follow the narrative. Either we help the Collector revive his wife (which coincidentally re-summons the colossal horror that killed her – oops!), or it transpires that the ‘Collector’ and his woes are just a figment of our own tortured psyches and it’s our own beloved wife who we caused to be killed and who we’re trying to bring back. There’s no happy ending – we’re all just snacks for the Cosmic Entities – but there’s plenty of warning when the finishing line’s in sight, so you can go off and finish all the side-quests, or just get in some fishing, first. Up to you.

In conclusion, this game is engaging, very pretty to look at and requires only the regulation number of fingers to operate. It’s more creepy than scary, but the horror is palpable and satisfying (no jump scares, all consequences), especially if deep water gives you the willies. There are more than enough missions and engine-building goodness to keep the most hardened gamer content and, on top of all this, you can go boating and sail across the waves, master of your own destiny. Even Patrick O’Brian would approve!

Four Tentacled Horrors from me.