Immaculate vibes. That's ultimately the summary of Dredge. I started playing this and got <i>quickly</i> sucked into its whole aesthetic. It's so inviting and so perfectly spooky and off-kilter in a way that I immediately loved. It wasn't until I finished the second... level?? that I realized I was playing a game, with game mechanics and whatnot. And even after that moment where the spell was broken, the energy of the game remained perfect right through the end.

The moment-to-moment gameplay was nice. The fishing is simple enough but it's a satisfying loop to go out, fish and check boxes, and then sell the fish for money to upgrade so you can go back out and fish. All very good and pleasant. The only real downside comes with how that plays out over time. I don't know if I was moving at a pace the game wasn't expecting, but I wasn't even close to being fully upgraded by the time I wrapped up. I found that at the end of the game, I was in this weird space where I was sort of striving for upgrades that were increasingly out of my league, and in the process of getting them, I ended up just finishing the game. I could, theoretically, go back now and try to finish getting those, but like... why bother? (Similarly, there's a very nice encyclopedia mechanic in here that I came absolutely nowhere near completing in full.) I know there are gamers out there who have the intrinsic motivation to finish those things themselves... but I am not one of them, and I sort of wish the game offered me some reason to keep doing things after I wrapped up the main content.