DREDGE

About DREDGE

DREDGE is a single-player fishing adventure made by the New Zealand studio Black Salt Games and published by Team17, released in March 2023. You arrive at a remote archipelago as a new fisher with a modest boat and a debt to work off, and you set about catching fish, selling your haul, and upgrading your trawler to reach deeper and stranger waters.

Most of the loop is calm and satisfying: you steer your boat, line up timing puzzles to land each fish, manage the grid of space in your hold, and talk to the odd townsfolk scattered across the islands. The art is soft and low-poly, and by day the sea looks almost peaceful.

The horror arrives with the dark. Staying out past nightfall raises a panic meter, and as it climbs your perception turns against you: rocks loom where there were none, shapes follow in the water, and it becomes hard to tell a real threat from one your mind invented. Pull up the net and your catch may come back twisted and wrong, and the deeper you dredge the more you learn about what sleeps beneath the archipelago.

The cosmic side of the story builds slowly through the people you meet and the things you haul up, in the manner of Lovecraft: cults, old gods, madness and a sense of how small you are against the deep. It is unsettling rather than gory, and it earns its dread through mood and the panic of being caught out after dark.

It suits players who like exploration, quiet management and slow-burn dread more than action or jump scares, and it plays well in short sessions across PC, consoles and phones.

How to play DREDGE

1. Sail your trawler between islands, cast your lines and play the timing prompts to catch fish, then arrange your catch in the grid of your hold.
2. Sell fish and salvage at the docks, pay down your debt, and spend money on engines, rods, nets and more cargo space to reach deeper waters.
3. Get back to a dock or safe spot before nightfall, or manage the rising panic if you choose to fish on in the dark.
4. Dredge the seabed and follow the townsfolk's requests to uncover the archipelago's buried story.

Tips

• Plan your route so you can reach harbour before dark; the panic meter makes night fishing risky and disorienting.
• Lay out your hold like a puzzle. Fish and gear take different shapes, and space is tight early on.
• Upgrade your engine and lights early so you can cover more water and handle the dark a little better.
• Not everything you see at night is real. Slow down before you steer around a hazard that may be in your head.

Questions