Overwhelmingly Positive
Total: 23.8 ThousandPositive: 22.9 ThousandNegative: 909
DREDGE is a captivating single-player fishing adventure with a sinister twist, blending RPG elements and cosmic horror. Set in a mysterious archipelago, you’ll captain your fishing trawler, explore remote islands, and uncover dark secrets lurking beneath the waves. With over 125 deep-sea creatures to discover, quests to complete, and upgrades to unlock, DREDGE offers a unique mix of relaxation and tension. The game’s atmospheric art and engaging exploration have earned it a stellar 90.23% AI Community Rating, with players praising its immersive atmosphere, fantastic story, and relaxing yet eerie gameplay. However, some note repetitive fetch quests and a lack of late-game challenge as drawbacks. If you enjoy atmospheric adventures with a touch of horror, DREDGE is a must-play. Dive in, but beware—what lies beneath may haunt you.
If you want a game full of Lovecraftian horror, this probably isn't for you If you want a cozy fishing game that is lovingly crafted and has subtle Lovecraftian elements scattered through its world, this game is definitely for you
---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10
Stick with me: This game isn't fun, takes no skill, and meanders through a mostly thin plot. That said, I still found myself wanting to keep going back into the boat to get a bigger engine, find a new fish, or complete a quest. 20 hours of bobbing around and I don't regret any of it. There's just something about it and it deserves the praise it has gotten, I'm just not totally sure why. Go fish.
The game isnt very long, hard or engaging, but my god is it a comfy experience. I wish the game was 100 hours long, it is a very chill and relaxing experience to play through. No matter what kind of games you are used to, this will be a positive and relaxing experience, i truly wish i knew more games like this.
[h1][i]"Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water..."[/i][/h1] Lovecraftian to the fishbone, DREDGE regresses the high seas to catch a glimpse of the abysmal terror in a delightfully casual fishing adventure. [h3][i]***[/i][/h3] DREDGE possesses a strange quality of being sweet and almost too casual while giving justice to one of the world's most renowned horror writers, HP Minecraft. Or is it Lovecraft? :-) Anyway, the best part about the game is that it does not pressure or punish the player [i]too much[/i]; it gives time to explore and unwind and still manages to convey what makes Lovecraftian horror unique through a simple day and night cycle. Sanity is fragile. Every night, sinister sea fog becomes a conductor and a metaphor for a fogged mind. Is there salvation when you fight the abyss of madness in and around you? Not gonna lie: sometimes I think we already live in a Lovecraftian world…Take these themes away from the game, and you will end up with an arcade fishing simulator. Core mechanics revolve. If you think that statement is missing something, I can assure you it is not. Several mini-games depict "fishing" or "dredging," and all constitute a wheel with revolving indicators. Not one is even remotely difficult. The main idea is to give a sense of time passing by and revert your focus from the clock rather than give a formidable challenge. The tricky part is to get the necessary equipment and have it on board if you require some particular catch and, well, locating the fishing spot in the first place. Some fish are nocturnal, forcing the fisherman to step out of his comfort zone. That is when things become obscure. Naturally, the fisherman should confront his demons: in the deep of the night, the deep of the ocean, and the deep of the mind. [i]Played on Steam Deck. Verdict for Deckers: Excellent.[/i] [i]Curator: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43571711/] A Crow's Nest [/url][/i]
The game starts strong, pulling you in with an engaging first two hours. The fishing and collecting mechanics are surprisingly addictive, and the inventory management adds a satisfying layer of strategy. The atmosphere is where the game truly shines—there’s an eerie beauty to the world that keeps you captivated early on. But as you play longer, the cracks start to show. The thrill of venturing out into the dark fades quickly once you realize that nothing in the night can really harm you. The supposed danger loses its teeth, and with it, the magic of the game’s tension. Things take an even bigger nosedive once you unlock the teleport home ability. At that point, even heading out after dark for a risky catch becomes trivial—why worry when you can just warp back to safety? The game could have greatly benefited from more mechanics to sustain the fear factor. A fuel mechanic to limit how far you can explore or a fog mechanic that distorts your location and disables your compass/map would have added some much-needed unpredictability and terror. All in all, the concept is fantastic, and the early game delivers a compelling experience. But without meaningful threats or sustained tension, it ultimately falls short of its potential.
The game is just okay. If you're into slow burn content, then maybe you'd like this more than I did. For me, the pacing was incredibly slow to the point that I use the game to get sleepy enough to sleep. But I 100% the game so it's good, right? Not really. I'm a completionist and since the goals aren't difficult I just went ahead and hunted all the achievements because of pure stubborness. The eldritch horror aspect wasn't palpable. I don't understand why everyone talks about how atmospheric this game is. There should be a feeling of dread throughout but it's mostly locked into the night time, which you can skip entirely just by sleeping. Running into giant "monsters" was scary when you first see them because you have no idea what's going to happen. But once you get used to them, they become more of a tedious annoyance than an actual threat. So long as you have good time management (and know where the docks are), the threats are not an issue. There wasn't much of a story either if that's the sort of thing you're looking for. NPCs just give you generalized ominous/sleepy dialogue that makes them feel like one-dimensional weirdo doomsayers. If you are keen, you can figure out the plot very early on in the game and it is exactly what you're thinking. So all the fishing and such are just stuff to do just to have the story play out exactly as you thought it would. For a game that's about uncovering the "secrets" of the depths, it is remarkably shallow. Fishing, inventory management, time management, fetch quests. I'd be all over it if there was a good reason for me to do all that work.
Loved the artwork and atmosphere of the game, as well as the sense of exploration. However, I found each aspect of the gameplay to be just repeated fetch-and-return quests, both as part of the main plot and side quests. I wouldn't have minded this so much if the fishing/dredging mechanic was more fun (maybe a quick puzzle to solve?). However, I know that most fishing games are built around the wait-until-icon-is-in-bar-then-click mechanism though, so maybe this is just not the right game style for me personally. Spending a game with nothing but this style of play wore off really quickly for me. Quests ended up quickly feeling like chores. And while it was fun to get meet new characters, the novelty quickly wore off as I knew they were just going to ask me to fulfill the same types of tasks. I feel like with a bit of more nuance and difference to the gameplay, this game would have really been something special for me! Instead, I am left with an experience of exploring some beautiful artwork and world-building, but not much else.
After playing for about 10 hours, I can’t believe how expensive this game was. It’s fun/cozy, but there’s not much there to make me want to keep playing. It’s fun to upgrade your boat but at this point in the game I have way more money than I know what to do with and no more upgrades to spend it on…RIP anyone who bought it full price.
The game does have a great atmosphere and graphics... However if you play it for more than 4h it's clear there's absolutely no challenge to anything and the game is extremely shallow. The cool creepiness of the beginning is replaced by a boring tidium of poor fetch quests and absolutely no real incentive to do anything. For the asking price it's poor value for money. I would only buy heavily discounted
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