2023-05-01 13:15:02
Game news 96% positive reviews on Steam, “little banger for the start of the year”… This video game will surprise you!
We have the right to a little moment of respite before the tidal wave that will certainly cause Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo IV or Final Fantasy 16. And it is this sweet moment that has picked Dredge for release, an indie nugget that some are already calling “one of the future best games of the year.”
Dredge, the fishing game…
It’s a safe bet that Dredge has passed under your radar. And yet a few little sleuths had already spotted this little nugget during the traditional Steam demo festivals. During the Steam Neo Fest last October, Dredge was also part of our list of atypical games to discover. And yet, on paper, the title of Black Salt Game and Team 17 is not the best seller. It is indeed a single-player fishing game, where your main goal is to go in search of fish to fulfill orders, upgrade your boat, catch bigger fish and so on. Personally, I can’t say that I’m a fan of games of this genre. I never understood the craze around Ultimate Fishing Simulator and I can’t stand seeing fishing mini-games galore in titles that absolutely don’t lend themselves to it. And yet… Maybe I need calm in the face of the ambient tumult of the past few weeks, but the gripping atmosphere of Dredge grabbed me right away. I loved emptying the fishing spaces one by one, going in search of groupers, squid or cod and filling my Poissondex a little more with each new maritime escapade. The calm waters that surround La Grande Moelle exude a certain serenity, a soothing calm, which pushes you to sail constantly, to the rhythm of a particularly qualitative soundtrack.
In fact, Dredge is a fishing game with a system that is simple and complex at the same time, but above all devilishly effective. It’s easy to learn, you quickly understand the concept and everything becomes denser as you go. First, you will have to fulfill orders, then buy better equipment, then do research to improve your ship or even fulfill certain requests in order to obtain special skills. For an hour, I constantly had the impression of moving forward, of progressing. And that, it contributes to the addictive effect of the game. Dredge is typically this kind of little game that we start in the evening before sleeping and which ends up keeping us awake all night because we have said to ourselves 100 times “come on, I catch that last fish and I quit”. The call of small bubbles synonymous with poiscailles to lure is so strong that we sometimes even risk braving the dangerous night to answer it. Because yes, Dredge offers an interesting day/night cycle, oscillating between the calm of the morning and an agonizing nocturnal atmosphere as possible. And of course, some fish will only come out at the late hours, forcing you to venture into the unknown. And that is the primary meaning of Dredge: take us off the beaten track. Because, you will understand, the title is anything but a classic fishing game.
… à la Lovecraft
Apart from its almost gloomy artistic direction, there is no hint of what Dredge really is. Sometimes the roughest diamonds are found in troubled waters, and that’s exactly the feeling that came out of this good hour of play. Dredge is full of things hidden in the shadows, and it quickly becomes clear that this isn’t “just” a fishing game. Moreover, from the first minutes, a strange feeling hovers in the air, the strong presentiment that you are not being told everything. You can feel it in the glaucous air of the characters, in the equivocal dialogues, in this dark side which is fully revealed once night has fallen… Why does the mayor seem so evasive regarding the reason for the departure of the previous fisherman in town? Why are the fish around La Grande Moelle undergoing strange mutations? What is that red glow on the horizon? So many questions to which I have not found an answer during this hour of play, but I am already ready to raise the sails once more and for ten hours (lifetime of the game) just to go dig up.
I finished DREDGE (12h), little banger of this beginning of the year! It’s very nice, I love the “fishing and occult” theme even if it’s still a little (too) light, and the whole upgrade aspect of BATO combined with the explo works well. A bit too grindy for my taste, but it’s still nice ???? pic.twitter.com/n7odiFkcil
— Geraud Zucchini (@DrGeraud) April 8, 2023
Nevertheless, according to the different opinions, the conclusion of all these stories with an occult bent is not very satisfactory. But this does not seem to have tainted the gaming experience of the thousands of players who have tried it. On Steam, the game has amassed over 7,000 reviews as of this writing, and 96% of them are positive. For his part, the developer and Youtuber Doc Géraud describes Dredge as “little banger of this beginning of the year”. And that is due in particular to its more than successful hybrid atmosphere, which borrows both from calm fishing games and from the Lovecraftian universe. If you are not afraid of fish, farming and black, Dredge has everything to be the little nugget to taste before the tsunami of big releases to come.
Note that Dredge has been available since March 30 on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series.
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