DREDGE

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Go check it out! Unique Thrill

It's 11 PM already? I STILL NEED TO FISH! What do you mean it's 11 PM? I have to get back to the dock first. What do you mean 11 PM irl? I STILL NEED TO FISH!

At first I found Dredge to be a relaxing pleasant looking little game with a simple game loop of fish to make money and dredge to upgrade things. Beating the game took me three evenings, for the first evening I stayed relatively close to the starting area slowly upgrading my fishing vessel. By the end of my second evening of play I had unlocked all the ship upgrades and was able to fish for all types of fish. The reason I played it this way or at least felt I had to play it this way is the game does a brilliant job of making exploration feel dangerous, locations feel ominous and your boat feels vulnerable. At the beginning of the game three hits will sink you and you move really slowly. Generally your safe during the day but weird things come out at night to attack your ship and this creates tension as you watch the clock and how far you are away from a dock. On my third evening of play with everything upgraded the map really opened up as my boat now moved quickly and could take 7 hits before sinking which removed most of the tension from exploring. The game has 5 main archipelagos to explore each of witch has a main quest to complete for an NPC. Some of the NPC's are very strange and creepy especially some of the side quests. The game also does a good job of passive storytelling with notes and scraps of paper being found in bottles or being dredged up giving cryptic bits and pieces of the story kind of how souls games do. Once you beat the game you can still keep playing if you want to find every fish type and variation. The graphical style of the game is pleasant, The musical score and sound effects are brilliant and are probably the main factor in creating tension. The writing in the game is also excellent and the developers are clearly fans of Lovecraft. All in all a brilliant game that everyone should try.

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