Review: Dredge
Dredge is the debut game from developers Black Salt Games, and if this is any indication of what they are capable of, then I’ll be watching their output very closely from now on as I am absolutely loving my time with this game.
The wonderful branching narrative begins with a fisherman who arrives at the island of Greater Marrow after his boat was destroyed on the rocks that surround it. He’s given a new boat and equipment by the town’s Mayor and is given the freedom to go fishing again, all under the promise to catch fish for the island and pay back for his boat and his equipment.
So begins an experience that in equal parts has you chilled and relaxed as you fish the calm waters around Greater Marrow, before slowly ramping up the tension and the mystery as you venture further away, meeting a variety of people who offer you help (or so they say), and the once calm waters beginning to swell and get choppy, with all sorts of quickly glimpsed creatures swimming just below the surface.
The day/night cycle adds another layer of tension, as when the sun goes down a variety of weird things begin to happen, which more often than not require you to either tough it out and risk losing some valuable cargo (and damage to your boat) or find the nearest port to dock and skip the time forward to the relative safety of daylight.
The mechanics of the fishing are simple enough and are essentially a test of your timing as you press a button numerous times at the right moment. Then it’s a case of stacking the various sized and shaped catches into your cargo hold in a way that resembles a Tetris board.
The more fish you sell, the more money you make, the more you can upgrade your boat and equipment, all leading to being able to travel to more of the islands on the map, which with no way points to lay down has you relying on your compass and map to get you to the places you want to be…just be careful not to get lost on the high seas, especially if night is almost upon you.
There is no linear narrative to follow and you are left to yourself on how you want to play the game. I stayed quite a while in and around Greater Marrow, quite happily fishing and picking up the odd request from the people I was meeting in that area. But it was when I began to expand my horizons that the true scope of the game began to dawn upon me, with new people, places, requests, creatures, sights and sounds all layering on top of each other in the most glorious of ways.
Dredging for timber and scrap becomes as important as finding new fish (all of which are listed in an encyclopaedia and becomes a Pokemon-esque “gotta catch ’em all” side quest should your mind work like that), as the bounties of your dredging all help with research to upgrade your boat and equipment, allowing more cargo space, faster engines, better rods and nets etc. There is always a constant stream of things on my “need to do” list which keep me addicted and searching the map.
Everything is helped too by a gorgeous art style which I never tire of, evoking a sense of calm as you gently float on the calm seas looking for water bubbles on the surface that denotes there’s something there for you to catch. The same art style though being used to introduce feelings of dread and discomfort as the narrative twists and turns, making you double think every offer that is made to you, with some seemingly simple requests turning out to be very much different from what you anticipated.
Dredge gives you a beautifully engrossing world to explore and create the story in the way that suits your own play style. There is so much more to it than I’ve mentioned so far, but I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, as one of the many joys of this games is discovering everything it has to give by yourself and then deciding where you want to go next.
This is a game that you can hop into if you have just 10 minutes free and you can catch a few fish for some more cash, or visit a new island, or complete a request from an islander. Though do be warned that this game has a habit of getting its hooks into you and those 10 minutes can easily turn into a few hours.
Highly recommended.
Review by Dave from an Xbox review code.