Hook, Line, and Sinker: The Haunting Voyages of Dredge

Looking for a game that mixes together horror and fishing? Look no further. 

Dredge is a single-player adventure game that perfectly mixes together the two worlds of cozy fishing and spine-tingling horror. You play as a fisherman who begins to encounter Lovecraftian creatures the more you explore the vast ocean. 

Developed by Black Salt Games, Dredge was released March 30, 2023, and is available to play on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, Windows, and mobile. It takes around nine hours to complete the main story, and an additional six hours to uncover all its secrets.

The fisherman explores the seas collecting materials and fish to upgrade their vessel. During the day, the game is cozy and peaceful, but the second the sun goes down the terror begins. The mood shifts completely; that sense of safety and comfort is replaced with unease, causing the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up. 

The characters you meet along the way always seem like they know something more than they tell you. Out of all the characters, the Mayor and the Lighthouse Keeper make me feel the most uncomfortable. Causing me to question if the fisherman was even wanted at their islands? Was there something much darker going on?

While the graphics in Dredge are beautiful, it's the soundtrack that shines the most. Dredge’s music knows exactly how to toy with your emotions. The music is the backbone to Dredge’s tone. The soundtrack often promises hope in the morning, but at night it turns eerie, letting paranoia grab hold of the player.

Dredge is a game that relies on storytelling, traveling to new islands, and completing side quests to unlock more of the secrets hidden under the water. To get the most out of Dredge, I recommend paying attention to the story and not rushing through it. Every little detail pieces together to solve one big puzzle, and if you miss a piece, you might just make the same mistake I did.

Dredge has two endings. A good one and a bad one- I got the bad one. How you get one versus the other comes down to one thing, which characters the player decides to trust. So be careful who you trust; they might just have a secret. 

I will admit one thing about Dredge: the game can get monotonous. The fisherman goes out, fishes, sells their fish, and upgrades their ship; that’s about it. There are side quests that add a little bit of variation, but sometimes it's not enough. For me, I liked the simplicity behind the mechanics and the cycle the fisherman goes through, because it allowed the music and the story to stand out the most, which are the two things I really look forward to in a game. 

The only true issue I had with Dredge was one of the ocean creatures located by Gale Cliffs. There’s a monster the player must navigate around, which I found incredibly hard. The beast has no predictable movements, making it so you simply must improvise when avoiding the creature, which is much faster than your vessel. The only predictable thing about the monster is that it will find you, and it will damage your ship; there’s no way around it. 

Other than my hatred for Gale Cliffs beast, I loved Dredge. It was a unique experience I haven’t found in any other games. The story, graphics, music, characters, and everything else in Dredge is perfectly blended, creating something that stands out in a sea of horror games. 

My Rating: