Dredge is an intriguing fishing game where something sinister lurks beneath the surface.  Shortly after you are hired as the fisherman for a sleepy little town by the name of Greater Marrow, you soon catch on that something’s not right.  People warn you not to go out after dark.  The mayor asks you to deliver a mysterious package whose contents you are clearly not meant to know.  And we hear tales about how the old mayor of Little Marrow, a small town just across the bay, eventually went crazy and was never heard from again.

Things only get weirder when you catch your first aberration, one of among dozens of types of corrupted fish that can range from fishies with human molars to poor souls that have been reduced nearly to a skeleton to abominations that have been split almost in two by a massive mouth.  Yeah, something is definitely wrong in the world of Dredge.

Your goal is to collect five missing items for a man known only as the Collector.  One can be found around the Marrows, while the other four require you to travel farther out to more distant isles, each with their own unique environment and threats.

Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to tell you.  I know why the townsfolk warn you not to go out at night.  Because…things get weird after dark.  The more tired and paranoid you get, the more strange creatures appear that can attack your boat.  (Actually, you’re not even safe from certain threats during the day if you allow your fisherman to get too nervous, as shown by the anxiously twitching eye at the top of the screen.)  When I initially started the game, I wondered why I cared if my fisherman was tired.  It’s not like this would affect my ability to navigate, right?  Well, you see, another consequence of getting too sleepy is that rocks will also pop up right in front of you, making it very easy to collide with them if you’re not careful, which I think is a rather ingenious way to simulate being overtired and overworked.

Now, after you’ve put in a hard day’s work and sold a whole bunch of fish, what exactly can you do with the money?  Well, glad you asked, because there are plenty of upgrades you can get that will make life just a bit easier.  For one thing, you can upgrade your boat in various ways, provided you have the necessary materials, increasing space for lights, rods, engines, and cargo space.  You can also use research parts (found randomly from dredging or from completing certain tasks) to unlock new equipment to buy, such as faster engines, brighter lights, and ways to catch more types of fish with rods that work in new environments, crab pots, and trawl nets.

One thing I really like about Dredge is that fishing is not about luck.  (Same goes for dredging; the silhouette typically tells you exactly what you’re going to pull up.)  When you stop at one of the many fishing spots scattered about the ocean, you can see the silhouette of which type of fish is present, so you won’t waste time on fish you don’t even want.  Aberrations require a bit more luck, but even then, you can greatly increase your odds of catching one by fishing over places with green swirls hovering over them.  Fishing or dredging doesn’t even require too much skill, either, just a bit of timed presses, which keeps such tasks from becoming too tedious.

And now for a few random notes.

1: The game has two endings, a good and a bad one.  This is where the story really comes together.  The lore in this game is rather interesting, but it’s also pretty easy to figure out once you put the pieces together, making for a story that’s intriguing without being too obtuse to solve.

2: The music is pretty relaxing and generally non-intrusive, and the graphics are simple.  The design for the characters is a bit…ugly, though I actually think this works quite well in this game because it really drives home that these are rough people living in a harsh world.

3: I do wish the game was longer and more substantial.  It feels a bit more satisfying because the endings are so well-done, but with such a unique concept, I would have gladly played longer, with more locations or each existing location being a bit bigger and more involved.

4: The game runs very well, with only a crash one time when I died.

5: I have only two complaints.  One, they put certain things way too close to the edges of the screen, and on certain TVs, they’re bound to be cut off, making it impossible for me to see what buttons were required for certain actions and to see the day at the top of the screen.  Fortunately, I recorded this game, and all of this was visible in the video preview window on my computer, but most people won’t have that to help them.  Secondly, moving things between storage/crab pots/etc and your cargo is a bit tedious.  Sure, you can sometimes do this with the press of a button, but other times, you just can’t, either because it’s simply not an option or because you need to move things around to make them fit.  If pressing a button moved the item to the other side of the screen in all instances (especially when transferring materials for boat upgrades), then that would at least streamline the process a bit.

A word of warning: Don’t buy the Blackstone Key DLC for $4.99.  I only got it because a slight sale made the game, with this DLC included, slightly cheaper than the base game.  All it does is open the workshop on Blackstone Isle and get you two items that you can easily go without.  I have heard good things about the Pale Reach DLC, however, which only costs $5.99 and includes a new location in the game.  I haven’t actually played it myself, though, so I can’t actually comment on its quality.

Dredge is, on the surface, a pretty relaxing game with creepy undertones, and I love it.  It’s not a challenging game; it doesn’t require luck or skill.  It’s more about the experience and slowly figuring out the story as you travel about, talking to people and reading messages in bottles that will give you the backstory for something important that happened before the events of the game.  I thoroughly enjoyed the game and would highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a more slow-paced game that has a great, eerie atmosphere.

Dredge takes about 9-18 hours to complete, depending on whether or not you just want to finish the story or get 100%.  It’s easy to get your hands on, as it’s available on all consoles and PC, though that $24.99 price tag almost NEVER goes on sale, and when it does, the best price I’ve ever seen was roughly $17.  So maybe play the demo first before paying full or almost full-price on this one, just in case Dredge doesn’t quite resonate with you.