DREDGE

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it's the guy from dead by daylight

[h2]A lack of depth. (Pun intended)[/h2] Starting of with its lovecraftian story. It's nice. It does a decent job, but not on a get-the-game-for-the-story level of decent. I was a bit zoned out near the end unfortunately, and did not get so much emotional impact by its final scenes. Overall, this game is a collectathon. Every quest is basically to find fish, then deliver said fish back. It does not really evolve beyond that. Fish have three major conditions: a spot somewhere in the world, the requirement of the correct rod, and whether its day or nighttime. The dopamine of unlocking a new type of rod to gain a new type of fish is fun the first time, but after that it just felt samey. This is a reoccuring issue with the game. Tied in with horror, that relies a lot on unpredictability, it slowly loses a lot of its immersion. It lacks surprises. I do love a time-based system that is affected by movement, rather than literal time. It's a modern design solution I think many more games would benefit from (looking at you Stardew Valley, you stress-inducing ♥♥♥♥! I still love you though.) Fishing during the night is when dangers might start to occur as panic grows. However, it is genuinely easy to either 1. just dodge the dangers, it aint that hard 2. go and rest up - meaning that the challenge of a specific fish is arbitrary. My panic and thus subsequent danger remained high due to me being too lazy to go and rest up because travelling back and forth is... you guessed it... boring. But the problem is not really the danger-element. If you treat it like a game in the cozy genre it kind of makes sense. The real problem lies in its macro-game. The economy system. About half-way through the game, money does not really matter anymore. I literally started throwing away fish rather than clicking through the menus to sell, because it was too tedious. Speaking of which, I wish sooooo much that the repair and sell menus were not separated, you have to constantly click back and forth every time you make a stop with the boat. After hours of playing, its frustrating. Tie in the problems with money, and then it gets exponentially worsened with the fish dictionary. Fish have no other effect besides monetary value and completing quests. Meaning if you find a fish thats money-efficient, you can just get that specific fish to sell a bunch. This is what I did with crabs. I got a lot of crab pots and just kept selling the same high-value crab. I had zero incentive to seek out different fish until the game forced me via quests. It would have been cool to have some of the fish to make a difference, or even be required for certain upgrades.What if fish sold for less if you have already sold it previously, to encourage seeking out different fish? What if abberation fishes boosted the boat's speed or reduced panic whilst they are in your inventory? What if the player was able to invest into eldritch portals to create their own fast-travel points? Or! Imagine an actual boss fight against an underwater beast, kind of what was hinted at in the game's mangrove-quest. In the end, the game feels nice to play. The controls are good, the art style is endearing (especially all the fish-variants! They are so creative!), and it makes me feel that the problem is that its game loop is unfinished. I think DREDGE is one of those games that desperately would benefit from a sequel, and I'm super excited to see it. The people behind this game is obviously talented. The ship is built. It just needs to sail away from the shoreline.