Dredge
#7
PC - Steam
Beaten April 17th, 2023
Dredge is a game I really WANT to love - a fishing game set in a small chain of islands where something sinister is lurking just beneath the depths... Hell yeah Lovecraft!! But, like almost everything Lovecraft, I'm loving the premise but the execution leaves a great deal to be desired. This is a fishing game at its core and that is its largest failing: the fishing and gameplay just are not very interesting!! Your little boat is fun to drive around the wider seas but ultimately you just stop at POIs and play a little minigame (a simple timing game) to scoop up whatever treasure or fish you've got and thats'... like 95% of the game right there and gosh it's just never interesting honestly? The other chunk of the game is its spooky atmosphere and the occasional threat that pops up in the darker hours: and you might say:
"oh, so things get more dangerous at night but more rewarding??" Technically yes, but only barely more rewarding and you don't reallllly need the upgrades anyway, or at least not badly enough, so you'll only go out at night as the plot demands.
"oh, but at least nighttime is more interesting right? With all the monsters? That's neat!" Well, yes, but again only barely. What few extra enemies MAY pop up (most nights nothing will happen to you) are not terribly dangerous and almost all of them just give you a good whack and wander off, your chances of dying are quite slim.
"Ah, but I bet the story is super creepy and messed up right?? Lots of good Lovecraft horror!" Yeaahhhhhh about that...
The Good
-Visuals overall are pretty stellar. Character art pops nicely in a painterly style, fish look fucking weird even when they're "normal" fish and only get stranger from there, fog rolling in at night looks super spooky
-Each island chain (there are 5) have their own overarching stories that are all pretty good and either feed into the main plot (the calamity that destroyed a seafaring civilazation seems awfully familiar to what little we've seen from what we're dealing with now...) or just weave a darn good spooky supernatural tale (a great beast is being studied by a lonely researcher and you've got to help them out)
-The music is a pitch perfect "chill music for the waves.. with a slight underscore of dread"
-No "oh you're going out of bounds!" warnings on this map... something else keeps you in the zone =D
The Meh
-The pacing is a bit off, the early game goes by pretty slow as you're bouncing between trying to upgrade your boat to be actually useful and go faster than a rowboat and moving the actual plot forwards. After the first two story sections though you'll be flying through things and those last two island chains (which are pretty cool!)
-Story is generally pretty good beat for beat, but overall is a bit... lacking? Lovecraft does its best work when things go increasingly bonkers as the ending ramps up: this is not the case here at all, outside a 15 second cutscene at the end. I think the "bad" ending is by far the more interesting of the endings but the "good" ending does explain a bit more in what the heck is going on, though it raises even more questions that would be too spoilery to be get into but just aren't that important anyway so I'll just leave it at: some things don't make entire amounts of sense if you do both endings, and not in a good "Lovecraftian what is reality anyway?" way, but a "why would a normal human being say and do that thing" way, which is a bit disappointing
-Some gameplay systems need a bit better of an explanation: you can ONLY get upgrades through research + stacking your motors makes you go much faster!
The Bad
-The fishing minigame starts off as tolerable and is just kinda annoying about 2 hours in. There is no challenge or skill or even barely an evolution of it the entire game, and there are no stakes whatsoever. It is however mercifully short.
-As I mentioned above, the gameplay variety is pretty minimal even for a twelve hour game. You boat around with no challenges or real changes (minus the 4th island, they have some neat twists there but that's less than an hour in this 10 hour adventure) and fish with no challenges or real changes.
The Hmm
-The pacing is a bit off, the early game goes by pretty slow as you're bouncing between trying to upgrade your boat to be actually useful and go faster than a rowboat and moving the actual plot forwards
So while I do think Dredge was overall a good experience it does leave me with a bit of disappointment. The gameplay could've done with quite a bit more shaking up and I'm not sure the upgrade system really works properly with the day/night cycle or even the "fear" system that I was pretty much free to ignore. The story had plenty of opportunities to tell about the horrors of the deep and rarely did more than dip its toe into the shallow end. So despite this Lovecraftian Horror having way too many appendages I found Dredge to be oddly toothless.
Final Grade: B-
#7
PC - Steam
Beaten April 17th, 2023
Dredge is a game I really WANT to love - a fishing game set in a small chain of islands where something sinister is lurking just beneath the depths... Hell yeah Lovecraft!! But, like almost everything Lovecraft, I'm loving the premise but the execution leaves a great deal to be desired. This is a fishing game at its core and that is its largest failing: the fishing and gameplay just are not very interesting!! Your little boat is fun to drive around the wider seas but ultimately you just stop at POIs and play a little minigame (a simple timing game) to scoop up whatever treasure or fish you've got and thats'... like 95% of the game right there and gosh it's just never interesting honestly? The other chunk of the game is its spooky atmosphere and the occasional threat that pops up in the darker hours: and you might say:
"oh, so things get more dangerous at night but more rewarding??" Technically yes, but only barely more rewarding and you don't reallllly need the upgrades anyway, or at least not badly enough, so you'll only go out at night as the plot demands.
"oh, but at least nighttime is more interesting right? With all the monsters? That's neat!" Well, yes, but again only barely. What few extra enemies MAY pop up (most nights nothing will happen to you) are not terribly dangerous and almost all of them just give you a good whack and wander off, your chances of dying are quite slim.
"Ah, but I bet the story is super creepy and messed up right?? Lots of good Lovecraft horror!" Yeaahhhhhh about that...
The Good
-Visuals overall are pretty stellar. Character art pops nicely in a painterly style, fish look fucking weird even when they're "normal" fish and only get stranger from there, fog rolling in at night looks super spooky
-Each island chain (there are 5) have their own overarching stories that are all pretty good and either feed into the main plot (the calamity that destroyed a seafaring civilazation seems awfully familiar to what little we've seen from what we're dealing with now...) or just weave a darn good spooky supernatural tale (a great beast is being studied by a lonely researcher and you've got to help them out)
-The music is a pitch perfect "chill music for the waves.. with a slight underscore of dread"
-No "oh you're going out of bounds!" warnings on this map... something else keeps you in the zone =D
The Meh
-The pacing is a bit off, the early game goes by pretty slow as you're bouncing between trying to upgrade your boat to be actually useful and go faster than a rowboat and moving the actual plot forwards. After the first two story sections though you'll be flying through things and those last two island chains (which are pretty cool!)
-Story is generally pretty good beat for beat, but overall is a bit... lacking? Lovecraft does its best work when things go increasingly bonkers as the ending ramps up: this is not the case here at all, outside a 15 second cutscene at the end. I think the "bad" ending is by far the more interesting of the endings but the "good" ending does explain a bit more in what the heck is going on, though it raises even more questions that would be too spoilery to be get into but just aren't that important anyway so I'll just leave it at: some things don't make entire amounts of sense if you do both endings, and not in a good "Lovecraftian what is reality anyway?" way, but a "why would a normal human being say and do that thing" way, which is a bit disappointing
-Some gameplay systems need a bit better of an explanation: you can ONLY get upgrades through research + stacking your motors makes you go much faster!
The Bad
-The fishing minigame starts off as tolerable and is just kinda annoying about 2 hours in. There is no challenge or skill or even barely an evolution of it the entire game, and there are no stakes whatsoever. It is however mercifully short.
-As I mentioned above, the gameplay variety is pretty minimal even for a twelve hour game. You boat around with no challenges or real changes (minus the 4th island, they have some neat twists there but that's less than an hour in this 10 hour adventure) and fish with no challenges or real changes.
The Hmm
-The pacing is a bit off, the early game goes by pretty slow as you're bouncing between trying to upgrade your boat to be actually useful and go faster than a rowboat and moving the actual plot forwards
So while I do think Dredge was overall a good experience it does leave me with a bit of disappointment. The gameplay could've done with quite a bit more shaking up and I'm not sure the upgrade system really works properly with the day/night cycle or even the "fear" system that I was pretty much free to ignore. The story had plenty of opportunities to tell about the horrors of the deep and rarely did more than dip its toe into the shallow end. So despite this Lovecraftian Horror having way too many appendages I found Dredge to be oddly toothless.
Final Grade: B-