The ocean is a source of mysteries, and deep sea horror is the name of the game in the Lovecraftian world of Dredge. With its last planned DLC released as of August 15th 2024, its high time we hit the open seas and showcased this fantastic foray into fishing.

Dredge’s story centers around the arrival of an Angler to the town of Greater Marrow, seeking a job listing for the town. Despite the town’s iconic lighthouse, our protagonist’s boat is destroyed upon the rocky shore, leaving the Angler in debt to the town as they fit him with a new boat and send him on his way fishing, with only the ominous warning to beware the encroaching fog, and to return before sundown. Players are free to fish as they want, but will quickly become limited by the rods they have, the speed of their boat, and the darkness of night to return to town to sell their catch to the Fishmonger. In town, the Angler can use his limited funds to buy new equipment and talk to the townsfolk of the dreary town, sometimes taking requests to deliver people and things to various points on the map. From there, the cycle repeats: catch fish, sell fish, upgrade your gear, everything as normal, right?

Well, that is until you catch your first fish that’s a little… off. Returning this fish to the Fishmonger shows he’s familiar with this, and that the fish of this area all have a chance of being wrong, or ‘Aberrations’, as they’re classified in game, and are worth more than their normal variants. Not only that, but the first aberrant fish you catch turns out to have a strange handkerchief in its guts, gathering the attention of the mysterious Collector of Blackstone Isle to your little fishing operation. 

Giving us our titular dredging equipment, the Collector and his mysterious Book set our character on the central pursuit of the game: the collection and recovery of 5 powerful relics lost to the sea an unknown number of years ago. This pursuit will send the player to each of the different major areas of the map, from the tropical Stellar Basin to the volcanic Devil’s Spine, each with their own host of fish to catch, NPCs to aid, and dangers to be dealt with, often blocking the player from just running in, taking the relic, and leaving. Help the Retired Whaler mend his relationship with his brother, the Hermit, to unlock the explosives needed to reach the ruined town holding the music box, or help the Researcher understand the monster in the depths of the Basin to get the equipment needed to bring up the ring. Bit by bit, by interacting with the characters and environment of the area, we start to paint a larger picture of the world, and a tragedy that set the events of the game into motion years ago. And, possibly, how our own Angler is involved in said tragedy as well. 

The two main DLCs unlock two new zones to explore, with the Pale Reach being a large ice flow to the far south of the map, and the Iron Rig being a large oil rig visible to the north of the map. The Pale Reach brings ice fishing and a story of greed at the hands of explorers, while the Iron Rig brags of industrial progress over individual safety, threatening the various other areas of the game with huge oil slicks and ancient creatures reawakened in the name of progress. As with the rest of the main game, these areas can be accessed and played at any time in any order, although with the far reaching effects of the oil from the Iron Rig, I would recommend exploring the original locals of the game before enacting the power of the Rig. 

Dredge is an immersive game with plenty to latch onto in terms of gameplay and replayability. Perhaps you want to catch all 230 fish available in the encyclopedia, including their various aberrations and mutations? Or you could finish all pursuits, leaving no loose ends and exploring every nook and cranny of the Isle, finding every secret and discovering the true identity of the Collector? With an in-game day counter, speedrunning is also a possibility, trying your luck to hit the main story beats in as little in-game time as possible, calculating every move to optimize your run. There’s plenty of fish in the sea, just be careful to count the number of eyes on your catch before putting it on your plate…