DREDGE

fish the nightmares

le fishe

god

10/10

Coming off Red Dead Redemption 2, I needed something smaller. I also had some traveling coming up for work and was going through a pretty stressful point in my life with PhD funding and everything else hanging over me. So naturally, I decided that the ideal escape would be a relaxing little fishing game about madness, sea monsters, cursed relics, and whatever is lurking beneath the water. Honestly? It worked. The fishing loop in Dredge is relaxing, addictive, and repetitive; sometimes all at once. There were nights when I had a genuinely difficult time putting it down, constantly convincing myself that I would catch one more fish, complete one more upgrade, or explore one more section of the map. Then there were moments when I caught myself thinking, “This is getting repetitive.” However, that was at least partially my own fault because I decided that I needed to catch every single type of fish and crab in the game. So I did. The progression system deserves a lot of credit for creating that obsession. Improving the boat, expanding storage, unlocking new rods, upgrading the engines, and gaining access to different categories of catches remained rewarding throughout the game. Every improvement opened another small part of the world, and every new species made me want to keep filling out the encyclopedia. The problem is that unlocking the best quality-of-life improvements requires you to spend a lot of time repeating the same actions. Fishing, selling, resting, traveling, checking crab pots, and doing it all again. The normal story probably ends before that repetition becomes a serious issue, but trying to complete everything exposes it. Still, the fact that I wanted to catch everything says more good than bad about the game. The world itself is divided into five main regions, and I genuinely enjoyed all of them. Each area has its own identity, wildlife, hazards, and small puzzles that prevent exploration from feeling completely interchangeable. I always looked forward to discovering what kind of catches a new region would introduce and what strange problem the locals would ask me to solve. The art style is easily one of the game’s greatest strengths. It is colorful, gloomy, charming, and unsettling without ever becoming visually overwhelming. The environments and character portraits create a world that feels almost cozy, even when the game is clearly suggesting that something deeply wrong is happening beneath the surface. The horror is generally more spooky-cute than genuinely terrifying. Devil’s Spine had a few moments that were more unsettling, but Dredge never became a game that truly scared me. Its horror comes more from atmosphere, implication, and the feeling that the ocean is watching you than from anything aggressively frightening. The nighttime panic system occasionally creates real tension, although it sometimes feels more annoying than scary. The strongest moments were when I had valuable cargo and knew that taking damage could cause me to lose something important. Suddenly, every strange shape in the water mattered because I had actual progress at risk. That was when the tension clicked. Most of the time, though, nighttime felt like an inconvenience I needed to manage rather than something I truly feared. I was more concerned about losing a rare fish than losing my mind, which is probably not exactly what the game intended. The story also surprised me. At first, I mostly thought it was interesting that this simple fishing game was trying to present something deeper. I was enjoying the atmosphere and progression more than the actual narrative. Then the mystery began developing, the pieces started connecting, and the story became much more rewarding. Learning the truth behind everything gave the journey more weight than I originally expected. I even reached the bad ending first because, honestly, it felt like the correct decision for the character and the story I had experienced. That ending matched the game’s tone so well that it almost felt wrong to do anything else. Without the completionist detour, I think Dredge ends at almost the perfect time. It is not trying to become some enormous 100-hour adventure. It establishes its loop, explores its different regions, tells its story, and finishes before the central concept completely collapses under repetition. It only began wearing thin because I refused to stop until I had captured every fish and crab imaginable. That is also the weird contradiction at the heart of Dredge: its progression is rewarding enough to make you obsessed, but becoming obsessed is exactly what reveals the limitations of its gameplay loop. Still, this game came into my life at the perfect time. I was stressed, traveling, and looking for something that would allow me to shut my brain off without becoming completely mindless. Dredge gave me a strange, relaxing little world to disappear into for a while. It is not the scariest game. It is not the deepest game. It is not the most mechanically varied game. But it is charming, atmospheric, rewarding, and surprisingly difficult to put down.

Excellent game, 25 hours to get 100% achievements.

Divertido, sinistro e dificil enjoar!

好玩，可以消磨时间

10/10

Fish, explore, relax - just don't get eaten!