The ocean is a common setting for a lot of cosmic and Eldritch horror. Lovecraft himself set many of his stories in fishing villages or on boats or ships. There's no shortage of video games that feature Lovecraftian fishing villages, from Bloodborne to The Sinking City, but I'm not aware of too many video games that focus on the fishermen who go out into those Eldritch oceans to catch the abominable fish. Well, now we have such a game in Dredge!
Dredge was on my radar since its release. It was one of those games that I put on my wishlist, but often skipped over it. Eventually, it went on sale on the PSN, and I had some extra gift card balance in my account, so I finally snatched it up and played it on-and-off for a few weeks. Unfortunately, my experience with the game was less-than-ideal, but that was entirely my fault, and talk about why later in this review.
Survival horror on the open ocean
Much to my surprise, Dredge is not really overtly horrific, except for like one (or maybe 2) area(s) of the map, and also the final cutscene. Despite the Eldritch inspirations, Dredge can be a surprisingly chill and relaxing game for the vast majority of its play time. How dangerous or scary the game will be will largely depend on how you choose to play the game (and how closely you adhere to the main quest). If you're constantly going out at night into the middle of the ocean, far away from the safety of a harbor, and actively fishing with dangerous threats nearby, then yeah, it might get a little challenging and maybe even creepy. But if you play it safe whenever you can, navigating paths that keep you within a short sprint from a harbor, and frequently resting to restore your sanity, then the game is pretty easy.
Though, under normal circumstances, the game will occasionally force you to have to go out at night to catch nocturnal fish. But even then, careful planning can still allow the player to avoid most of the more dangerous hazards. The day-night cycle goes very fast, but the clock only runs when the boat is moving or the player is fishing. So you can sit and idle for as long as you wish in order to check your map or your quest log and plan out the day's activities. Safe harbors are usually placed within a day's journey from each other, so again, careful planning and deliberate play can be very effective at mitigating risk.
Light is necessary to avoid hazards, but can also attract other panic-inducing dangers.
Surprisingly, there are no survival elements. Heck, there's not even any crafting! You just invest research tokens into new equipment, and collect various materials to upgrade your boat, and then just buy the upgrades and equipment with the cash earned from selling fish. You don't have to buy provisions or cook the fish you catch in order to fill a hunger bar. There really isn't a sleep or stamina meter either. Nor do you have to buy things like fuel for your boat or batteries to keep the lights running. The only things for you to manage are inventory space on your boat and a simple sanity meter (which effectively operates as a proxy for a sleep meter). I'm personally torn on whether including a hunger meter would have hurt or improved the game.
However, I do think that the game could have benefitted from tying the on-board lights to some kind of battery or generator, which would have to be re-charged or re-fueled at towns. A big part of why the game proved so easy for me is that I kept my lights on pretty much all the time, because there isn't much detriment to doing so. It attracts some enemy types at night, but they are the least dangerous enemy types anyway. One is easily-avoided and doesn't damage you directly (it only decreases your sanity), and the other can be seen coming from a mile away, and so it is fairly easy to avoid as long as your engines aren't already broken. Having to re-charge or re-fuel your lights would force the player to have to more strongly consider whether turning on the light is worthwhile, and would put more pressure on the player to not just leave the light on all the time (thus depleting sanity more quickly). Also, it would be something to spend your money on later in the game, after you already bought all the upgrades and equipment.
I accidentally broke the game
But then again, my experience was much easier and more chill than yours probably would be. My first playthrough was tainted by an un-intentional progression exploit that made the game far less threatening. I did not turn in the various Relics to the Collector until I had found all of them. Instead, I just left them in my inventory. After all, I didn't see much reason to return the Relics to the Collector as I found them, and I suspected early on that the Collector wasn't necessarily trust-worthy. What I didn't know is that turning in these relics unlocks the more dangerous threats in the open ocean, as well as providing abilities that are used to circumvent those threats.
I stashed all the Relics away in Storage until the very end of the game.
Since I didn't turn the Relics in until the very end of the game, and then went straight to the end of the game, I never once saw any of the more dangerous creatures or effects of low sanity in my first (complete) playthrough of the game. As such, I had an inferior experience with the game. I enjoyed it enough to keep playing, but did kind of go through most of the second half of the game wondering what all the fuss was about.
I'm really surprised that the developers didn't do anything to address this, such as somehow forcing the player to have to turn in the Relics one at a time, as you find them. The abilities are all designed to mitigate the threat of the more advanced enemies, so not triggering those enemies means the abilities aren't really necessary. They kind of create the problem that they are intended to solve! There's hardly any pressure or incentive for the player to turn in these Relics in a more timely manner. The biggest incentive to turn them in is that they take up a large amount of storage space. But it wasn't so much that I felt an overwhelming need to get rid of them. Sure, it meant I had to more frequently play Tetris with my storage inventory, and make more frequent trips to the Trader to sell goods, but it was manageable. Perhaps the later Relics shouldn't be available to find or retrieve until the earlier ones are found? Like maybe the man who creates explosives doesn't show up until after the Key is delivered to the Collector. Sure, that would eliminate some of the open world "sandbox" nature of the game, but it would also ensure that every player is actually getting the intended experience out of the game.
I did reload my end-game save, and explore the open ocean a little bit to see some of the more exotic things that I had missed. I even restarted the game on a second save slot with the intent of turning in the Relics as intended, and trying to get a more authentic Dredge experience. But a replay just wasn't the same. I already knew where everything was, and the sense of mystery and exploration was lost.
I missed out on the true dangers of the open ocean.
I do intent to buy the DLC expansions if I see them go on sale over the holidays. That might give me an opportunity to get that more authentic experience with new content that will still be fresh and unknown. And I'll be sure to be more diligent in following the main questline in those DLCs.
Not alone on the Eldritch ocean
Nevertheless, Dredge was still sufficiently atmospheric. The core loop of catching fish was an excellent time-sync activity that kept me coming back whenever I had an hour or 2 to kill after putting the toddler down for sleep. Even having accidentally sucked all the challenge out of the game, the process of exploring the map, solving the challenges at each of the islands, and finding all the different wacky types of fish proved compelling enough to carry the game on its own. The characters and situations are fun enough on their own.
Aside from the exploitability of not turning in the Relics, Dredge is generally very well designed. First and foremost, the art is great. Is very simplistic, cartoonish graphics that are bright and colorful in the day, but also ominous and difficult-to-see during the night. There's also fog and mist that will cut down on visibility, even during the day. But disorientation is always temporary. There's a lighthouse in the center of the map that acts as a fixed landmark that is visible from almost anywhere. As long as you have a clear line of sight, you can always orient yourself without using the in-game map. But the in-game map is also always accessible, and your location clearly displayed, so you'll never be truly lost.
Greater Marrow's lighthouse is a constant landmark for orientation -- whether by night or broad daylight.
Different types of fish have different fishing mini-games with different timing rules, which keeps the core fishing mechanic from getting too repetitive and stale. The timing is also strict enough that many fish are challenging to successfully catch. Each of the various islands also throws its own wrenches into the process of catching fish, since each island has its own unique monsters with their own rules for when they spawn and how they pursue and attack the player's boat. So even without the open world threats, the main campaign still had plenty of challenges for me to have to plan and navigate around.
There's also quite a lot of side content. As you explore, you can come across various characters that each offer the player a small quest (usually requiring you to catch some specific fish or dredge up some material). There's also puzzles that can test your Tetris skills. So there's never any shortage of things to keep you occupied.
I think it's kind of a bummer that after completing a character's quest, they don't do anything else for the rest of the game, and don't offer the player anything new to do. For example, there's a woman who you can take to a small island to let her build her own house. Once you give her all the materials for her house, she builds the house, and gives you an extra place to dock, but other than that, she doesn't do anything else for the remainder of the game. Every time you visit her, she says she's still settling into the new house.
There's an eclectic cast of characters who each offer quests to the player.
How do I grade this?
Because of the unique circumstances of my first playthrough, I really struggle to think of a specific score. I played through the entire game, and completed all of the side quests, and largely had a good enough time doing it all, even if it did feel more like a simple time-killing exercise. So in that regard, I think it easily deserves a C+, or maybe even a B-, based on my unique play experience. But I can still totally see the full potential of playing through the game as it was intended to be played.
Many other people absolutely love this game, and it gets very high scores. So with full recognition that I played the worst possible playthrough of the game, and still would give it a respectable grade, I feel fairly safe in deferring to the glowing reviews that it received from others, hence the tentative score of A. Even at its worst and most boring, Dredge is addictive and fun. At it's best, it's also challenging and ominous.
I guess it works almost equally well as a chill "virtual vacation", and also as a sea-faring cosmic horror adventure.