Every so often I get the chance to review an Indy title with an interesting concept that seems a bit off,but I need to know more. Black Salt Games and Team17 were awesome enough to toss me a copy of such a game,and that game is DREDGE.
The idea is simple, and it plays just as simple as it sounds. You are a fisherman, who crashes their boat at a small port town of Greater Marrow. You are quickly given a new boat and told you can pay it off as you help out the town.
You will start by meeting the townspeople, they are nice enough people that are willing to fix your ship and buy your fish along with selling you upgrades and sending you on some fetch quest. Oh and they do give you one small rule, don’t go out at night.
The fishing is done with various mini games, timing hitting buttons with the green box, or hitting the circle when it lines up or in the case of dredging up new items making sure you don’t hit certain spots on a spinning sort of dial. It is all very well done.
I did get a little tired of simply fishing during the day and decided I needed to see what would happen if I went out at night, because like anyone else told not to do anything I have to try it out. The darker it got the higher the level of panic level went. The fish also became more rare and sold for more money.
This is when things started to get weird. Eyes began to stare at me from a distance. Red smoke would begin to follow me and attempt to overtake my boat as I would flee not wanting to risk losing my days haul. The longer you spend out at night,the worse these things become until the stop being things that watch you and become things that can end your game prematurely.
The game isn’t perfect,I wasn’t a fan of the inventory system. Imagine the Resident Evil cache case. I often found myself having to toss out fish or wood I needed for upgrades because I needed something else just a little bit more. It made the game more difficult than it needed to be in some aspects when other things were made quite simple and relaxing.
The graphics and sound could have been better I’m sure,but personally I loved them both. I don’t think I will ever forget the first time I heard a foghorn in the night or when an arm of what I can only describe as a kraken crushed my ship because I decided to try to rush back to port in the night.
I know I haven’t mentioned the story and that is intentional. First, you are either going to love it or hate it and second I feel like it should be seen blindly just like I did.
I do however feel comfortable saying this game is a great buy. 8/10 with ease,and at $25 this is one of the better Indy titles on the market.
Savior Gaming 