"you're on a boat, motherf**ker; please try not to forget"
You start off as a slow little tugboat captain hauling in small loads of tiny mackerels for a pittance, afraid to sail in the open ocean for fear of not being able to make it back before nightfall. In the opening hours of the game there are many moments where the game-play loop of trying to catch enough fish before dark rolls in and slowly upgrading the nameless captains little dingy into a vessel capable of carrying multiple oceanic giants. is pretty interesting
sadly imagination greatly outweighed actuality here, there are a multitude of issues regarding gameplay.
The first being almost how immediately the tension deflates after you figure out that nearly ever "threat" in the game boils down to slow enemy that mindlessly chases the boat, the real problem was that as soon as i was able to get my speed over approximately 29 mph combined with the burn engine ability and then hull upgrades, I never died even once in my time with dredge. A game with no fail state, (or in this case one that is incredibly hard to achieve) has very limited potential for tension.
Myy boat by early mid-game was doing it' s best impression of the honeycomb cereal creature ; zooming around every threat with my cthulu vibes pumping through the engine block conglomerate of my never visually growing ship.
There are basically two enemy types in dredge with certain environmental hazards being unique within the different gimmick biome each of the 5 main islands clusters (Rhode Island staring area, Swamp, Rocky Cliffs, Hawaii with extra squid, and volcanic hot zone). these enemies come out at night and they are red clouds of bad vibe whispers and big angler fish that look like other fishing boats (That are all black and chase you) so i never let them near me except for experimentation because I wanted to see what happened.
The initial game play loop of dredge is to catch fish, then sell them, once you have enough money, you buy an upgrade, make your ship bigger, which lets it carry more fish, install a winch that can reach oceanic, then abyssal and hadal depths for rare and expensive deep sea catches that can be used to spend more money unlocking upgrades for your ship. Unfortunately none of the upgrades made to your ship have any visual representation on the boat, by the end of the game your boat has more than double the capacity for hauling fish and can carry what look to be giant mechanisms for hauling in fish as well as giant bar headlights and huge deep sea fishing rods, but none of that ever is visually represented on your ship, down to every crab pot and trawl net being the same model.
The game doesn't really enough mechanical depth (no pun intended) for this not to be a superficial complaint, i really would have liked to see my equipment represented on the in game model of my boat, as this would have added to my overall sense of immersion as i felt like my boat wasn't actually getting bigger, tougher, and more capable visually as well as just functionally. The boat getting bigger in the over-world as well as the inventory screen would have added for extra needed challenge when navigating the tight corners of certain locations in the games latter half, while being a neat immersive ramp up of the games difficulty. The game only gets easier as you unlock more engine space because your boat only ever gets more nimble
When fishing, the player plays a series of mini games where they rhythmically press the f key in time with little sliders or shapes that fill a circle or etc , this passes time and puts fish into your inventory, all the fish are different sizes and have to arranged manually into your inventory. one complaint i have about the inventory system is that equipment cannot be stored on the boat anywhere except for where it is installed, meaning that in certain situations you will install a new piece of equipment and it spits the other one back out into your cursor holding it, but if you are out of space in storage you are forced to either sell your old equipment at a loss or discard something from storage to make room.
oftentimes i would have my whole cargo hold free but for whatever reason the game wouldn't let me use that as temporary space for my equipment while i did storage management. This especially stung when the game will let you refund something for full price before you have dropped it into your inventory, but if you install your new part and come to find it doesn't fit in your storage you are guaranteed losing money no matter what.
owing to the lovecraft inspired setting (without really committing)the fish sometimes come out very deformed, twisted by the nebulous Cthulhu vibes energy. I do really like the art design of the fish and especially the deformities and you can tell this is where the art team spent most of the time thinking about presentation and i appreciate that as the variety of fish is very neat and wanting to see what was out there is what drove me to complete the game.
There are also trinkets in the game which can be sold for money alongside fish, these can be found in wrecked ships or when dredging for upgrade materials with the winch the man on blackpoint island installs for you. With these trinkets comes another huge complaint, these trinkets can only be sold to the one merchant on little narrows, and that is it, they cannot be sold anywhere else so in most cases i would leave them behind as deep sea fish were often worth more and could be sold at any trader pontoon which are conveniently located in every biome as opposed to all the way back in the starting area.
Once the Upgrade system has been completed there no longer any driving factor to completing anything in the game, the whole economy is spent on upgrading the ship and by the time the last two biomes rolled around I was already the point where my ship was complete rendering the the whole gameplay loop of fishing which is already just a boring series of mini games thankless as there is no traditional skill based gameplay on offer here.
The back half of this game is seriously such a slog and it kind of poisoned the whole experience, basically the game starts out with a good first impression, but as far as indie games go and "vibe games" this game has some neat pictures of mutated fish and really not all that much else, if they wanted to have combat free experience there really needed to be some sort of mechanical or strategic depth somewhere in the game to justify the monotony of the fishing and dredging mini games which both boil down into pressing F at the right time. Couple that with a reward path for the player that ends before the end of the game and doesn't ever really have a tangible effect on gameplay rather than being told yes you can fish here or no you cant. or being able to style harder on the pathetically slow sea creatures that chase you.
Dredge could have deeply benefited from an economy system or something more than the surface level , selling fish at the market for cash to buy upgrades.
Dredge unfortunately wears out its welcome fast with little mechanical or strategic depth to keep the player engaged, overly simple game-play mechanics and an ecomony based around upgrades that don't actually affect the mechanical gameplay of pressing f at the right time to catch fish or steering away from the pitiful threats the game has to offer.
This game has really cool fish art. but very little in the way of replay-ability, longevity or gameplay.
You start off as a slow little tugboat captain hauling in small loads of tiny mackerels for a pittance, afraid to sail in the open ocean for fear of not being able to make it back before nightfall. In the opening hours of the game there are many moments where the game-play loop of trying to catch enough fish before dark rolls in and slowly upgrading the nameless captains little dingy into a vessel capable of carrying multiple oceanic giants. is pretty interesting
sadly imagination greatly outweighed actuality here, there are a multitude of issues regarding gameplay.
The first being almost how immediately the tension deflates after you figure out that nearly ever "threat" in the game boils down to slow enemy that mindlessly chases the boat, the real problem was that as soon as i was able to get my speed over approximately 29 mph combined with the burn engine ability and then hull upgrades, I never died even once in my time with dredge. A game with no fail state, (or in this case one that is incredibly hard to achieve) has very limited potential for tension.
Myy boat by early mid-game was doing it' s best impression of the honeycomb cereal creature ; zooming around every threat with my cthulu vibes pumping through the engine block conglomerate of my never visually growing ship.
There are basically two enemy types in dredge with certain environmental hazards being unique within the different gimmick biome each of the 5 main islands clusters (Rhode Island staring area, Swamp, Rocky Cliffs, Hawaii with extra squid, and volcanic hot zone). these enemies come out at night and they are red clouds of bad vibe whispers and big angler fish that look like other fishing boats (That are all black and chase you) so i never let them near me except for experimentation because I wanted to see what happened.
The initial game play loop of dredge is to catch fish, then sell them, once you have enough money, you buy an upgrade, make your ship bigger, which lets it carry more fish, install a winch that can reach oceanic, then abyssal and hadal depths for rare and expensive deep sea catches that can be used to spend more money unlocking upgrades for your ship. Unfortunately none of the upgrades made to your ship have any visual representation on the boat, by the end of the game your boat has more than double the capacity for hauling fish and can carry what look to be giant mechanisms for hauling in fish as well as giant bar headlights and huge deep sea fishing rods, but none of that ever is visually represented on your ship, down to every crab pot and trawl net being the same model.
The game doesn't really enough mechanical depth (no pun intended) for this not to be a superficial complaint, i really would have liked to see my equipment represented on the in game model of my boat, as this would have added to my overall sense of immersion as i felt like my boat wasn't actually getting bigger, tougher, and more capable visually as well as just functionally. The boat getting bigger in the over-world as well as the inventory screen would have added for extra needed challenge when navigating the tight corners of certain locations in the games latter half, while being a neat immersive ramp up of the games difficulty. The game only gets easier as you unlock more engine space because your boat only ever gets more nimble
When fishing, the player plays a series of mini games where they rhythmically press the f key in time with little sliders or shapes that fill a circle or etc , this passes time and puts fish into your inventory, all the fish are different sizes and have to arranged manually into your inventory. one complaint i have about the inventory system is that equipment cannot be stored on the boat anywhere except for where it is installed, meaning that in certain situations you will install a new piece of equipment and it spits the other one back out into your cursor holding it, but if you are out of space in storage you are forced to either sell your old equipment at a loss or discard something from storage to make room.
oftentimes i would have my whole cargo hold free but for whatever reason the game wouldn't let me use that as temporary space for my equipment while i did storage management. This especially stung when the game will let you refund something for full price before you have dropped it into your inventory, but if you install your new part and come to find it doesn't fit in your storage you are guaranteed losing money no matter what.
owing to the lovecraft inspired setting (without really committing)the fish sometimes come out very deformed, twisted by the nebulous Cthulhu vibes energy. I do really like the art design of the fish and especially the deformities and you can tell this is where the art team spent most of the time thinking about presentation and i appreciate that as the variety of fish is very neat and wanting to see what was out there is what drove me to complete the game.
There are also trinkets in the game which can be sold for money alongside fish, these can be found in wrecked ships or when dredging for upgrade materials with the winch the man on blackpoint island installs for you. With these trinkets comes another huge complaint, these trinkets can only be sold to the one merchant on little narrows, and that is it, they cannot be sold anywhere else so in most cases i would leave them behind as deep sea fish were often worth more and could be sold at any trader pontoon which are conveniently located in every biome as opposed to all the way back in the starting area.
Once the Upgrade system has been completed there no longer any driving factor to completing anything in the game, the whole economy is spent on upgrading the ship and by the time the last two biomes rolled around I was already the point where my ship was complete rendering the the whole gameplay loop of fishing which is already just a boring series of mini games thankless as there is no traditional skill based gameplay on offer here.
The back half of this game is seriously such a slog and it kind of poisoned the whole experience, basically the game starts out with a good first impression, but as far as indie games go and "vibe games" this game has some neat pictures of mutated fish and really not all that much else, if they wanted to have combat free experience there really needed to be some sort of mechanical or strategic depth somewhere in the game to justify the monotony of the fishing and dredging mini games which both boil down into pressing F at the right time. Couple that with a reward path for the player that ends before the end of the game and doesn't ever really have a tangible effect on gameplay rather than being told yes you can fish here or no you cant. or being able to style harder on the pathetically slow sea creatures that chase you.
Dredge could have deeply benefited from an economy system or something more than the surface level , selling fish at the market for cash to buy upgrades.
Dredge unfortunately wears out its welcome fast with little mechanical or strategic depth to keep the player engaged, overly simple game-play mechanics and an ecomony based around upgrades that don't actually affect the mechanical gameplay of pressing f at the right time to catch fish or steering away from the pitiful threats the game has to offer.
This game has really cool fish art. but very little in the way of replay-ability, longevity or gameplay.