On the surface, Dredge seems like a relaxing fishing game where you’ve been recently hired as the new fisherman for the coastal town of Greater Marrow.  But something is clearly amiss amongst these idyllic isles when you start to catch strange fish and uncover eerie mysteries, such as tales of a mayor who went insane and an enigmatic Collector who is seeking out particular artifacts from amongst the many shipwrecks littering the area. (In case you’re interested, Hatm0nster wrote his own thoughts on the game a little while back.)

Dredge starts out with a brief cut scene where the protagonist heads to Greater Marrow for the newly-opened fisherman job.  Along the way, his boat runs into jagged rocks, but he manages to survive the collision and is even granted a replacement boat by the mayor.  Of course, the major is certainly not just going to give you this boat, so a small amount of your fish sales shall be set aside to go towards paying off your boat and improving the town.  You’re also warned not to stay out too late and to avoid the fog that appears after dark.

The game starts out pretty slow-paced, and rather relaxing, as you meander about catching fish and selling them to the local Fishmonger.  At first, you can only catch fish at a more medium depth, no shallow fish or those found in the deeper water.  In order to catch something, you must go over an area of swirling fish (fish you can catch is signified by a hook symbol), and once you begin the process, you must press the Y button when the arrow passes over the green sections of the circle.  Even though I wasn’t the best at this, I still didn’t have much trouble catching fish with relative ease, though I learned upon my first visit to the Fishmonger that you must sell the fish quickly or else it will get stale and sell for less.

Dredge appears to be a very open game, with many different islands stretching out beyond the horizon (the game even boats of “5 unique zones), but in order to limit you from experiencing too much for free, the demo denies you access to certain equipment.  For example, although you have two options for catching shallow fish at the Shipwright (no idea what the difference is between the two), there is no way to catch deeper fish in the demo.  Even so, you can still earn money quite quickly, so it wasn’t long before I had paid off my boat, which grants you access to the Dry Dock, though none of the Dry Dock’s many improvements to your ship are available in the demo, either.

Now, fishing is not the only thing you do in this game.  There’s also the game’s namesake, dredging.  After catching a rather creepy looking Barbed Eel with a handkerchief in its belly that the Fishmonger ominously described as a “corrupted fish”, I was asked by a mysterious man to meet him on Blackstone Isle.  This man, who calls himself a Collector, is looking for artifacts that had been lost in the many shipwrecks in the area.  After installing a Dredge Crane on your boat, it was finally time for me to search for some really interesting stuff.

After learning that many shipwrecks can be found in the back of Greater Marrow, it wasn’t long before I used my new dredging equipment to pull up a very interesting find (for dredging, you press Y to swap between two circles and avoid hitting obstacles).  This particular object was an Ornate Key that seemingly changes shape!  Now keep in mind that bringing this item to the Collector will end the demo, though I was fortunately still allowed to return to the game and keep poking around to see what else I could find, as my curiosity had yet to be satisfied.  I didn’t find too much else that piqued my interest, just some humming rocks and another creepy fish called a Host Eel, which had glowing, wriggling shapes within its “distended ribcage”.  Ugh…  Plus I have yet to find the source of the glowing red beam of light that appears on certain nights.  But there’s a good reason why nighttime excursions are rather dangerous.

One last thing I wanted to mention was what happens if you allow your character to get too tired.  While you are warned to get plenty of rest and return to shore before night falls, I had my doubts as to the consequences of ignoring such warnings.  What’s it matter if my character gets a bit too sleepy, I asked?  After all, I feel fine, so I should have no trouble guiding him through the gloomy waters, thank you very much!

Well, once you start to get a bit tired, an eye appears at the top of the screen, which begins to twitch and look about nervously.  Shortly before my time with the demo came to a close, I allowed my poor fisherman to get particularly exhausted, and weird things started to happen.  Strange shapes appeared in the darkness, eyes watching me from a distance, and I even saw a shadowy boat that looked quite similar to mine appear from around the bend.  Suddenly, it was coming right at me, and unless I’m mistaken, it seriously appeared to transform right before my eyes into some sort of anglerfish before ramming into me and damaging my boat.

After that, I took the need for sleep much more seriously and attempted to steer my struggling boat back to shore.  But even now, the danger was not yet over, as rocks that were previously absent seconds before would appear right in front of me, almost causing me to wreck my already damaged vessel further.  As I turned the corner into Greater Marrow, I saw the ghostly shapes of shipwrecks that were definitely not there during the daytime!

My one complaint would be that they really needed to place certain information further from the edges of the screen.  My TV cuts off the edges of the screen, making it very difficult to see some of the game’s controls or other bits of info.

I’ve always been a big fan of ocean-themed horror games, and the demo for Dredge has just the right amount of eerie occurrences that I’m quite eager to dive back in as soon as I see a sufficient sale.  Dredge is available on all major consoles and PC for $24.99 (or $26.99 if you want the Deluxe Edition, which includes the Blackstone Key DLC, worth $4.99) and takes roughly 10 hours to complete (or closer to 20 hours for 100%).