Dredge invents and perfects the fishing-horror genre

The coral grouper’s skin erodes like the living reefs it inhabits. Blue spots on vibrant orange skin are bleached white, decaying scales down to exposed bone. With dead eyes and gaping eyes, the fish, among others that have not yet swelled, lurks in the shallow waters of Dredging‘s Stellar Basin. The ocean might as well be an alien world, a place completely uninhabitable for humans – and yet it covers most of our Earth and holds more mysteries and horrors than most can imagine.

In Dredgingthe debut video game from developer Black Salt Games, those mysteries are starting to reveal themselves. Dredging begins with a fisherman arriving under unusual circumstances at Greater Marrow, an island in an archipelago that interrupts a vast expanse of wine-black sea. His ship has been destroyed on the rocks guarding the shoreline, so he’s quickly given a new boat and some fishing line and sent out by the mayor; the people must have something to eat.

And so he fishes. Dredging is, after all, a fishing game – albeit one that meets the idea of fishing rather than the reality of it. Playing as the fisherman I go out to sea and cast my line. During the 12 hours of sunlight, you can see where the fish bubble to the surface, their shadows dancing beneath the waves. When you cast your line, a fish immediately bites; there is no waiting patiently for a single nibble. Catching the fish requires a simple timing mini-game, where you have to press a button at just the right moment. But to keep the fish to sell later, you need to make room in your hull; every catch means rearranging the gridded cargo hold to optimize storage, a little game Tetris with every new fish. Space and time management are essential for Dredging.

The more fish you catch, the more you can sell, leading to improved rods, motors and nets. The challenge, however, is that new gear also takes up the same precious cargo space as your fresh (and rotting) catches. Fish a few hours into the game and you’ll soon realize it might be easy to fill your craft with mackerel, which takes up two grid spaces, but a lot of more difficult to organize rays and sharks, which quickly take up space in erratic ways. Through all this fishing, selling and upgrading you will find places to moor on other islands, one of which will have the fisherman searching for various artifacts that threaten to reveal more secrets of the ocean than he may want. to see. That is quickly understood DredgingThe ocean has plenty of mysteries – many of which arise at night.

It’s not just mackerel and coral grouper that swim in it Dredgingthe seas; something rots the fish and turns them into grotesque monsters. If you fish long enough at night, they will reveal themselves more easily and emerge from the sea to tear your ship to shreds. In these moments Dredging goes a little bit into horror. But it’s a gentle psychological horror – almost gentle – that stalks the fisherman in the dark and early hours of the morning. It’s one of those games whose meditative moments are all the more comforting to the shadows lurking around them; Dredging has a sharp edge, but it won’t hold it against my throat.

Image: Black Salt Games/Team17

In many ways, Dredging exclaims developer Adam Robinson-Yu’s A short walk. Dredginglike it A short walk, forces me to think about why I’m playing a game. It’s not to win or to get some payout as soon as possible, but to stop and do nothing – to pay meaningful attention to the small details of the world. It’s in the way Dredgingthe sun hides behind the water as day turns to night, in the shocking horror of pulling out a fish that’s just a collection of eyes, or the way you drag up a soaking wet cloth just now when you need it for a new hull. The atmosphere says so much more about it Dredgingworld than any dialogue ever could. It’s a story of gentle nudges toward subtle places of beauty and terror.

Image: Black Salt Games/Team17

Wandering is encouraged Dredging; the map must be pulled up and studied, as waypoints cannot be placed. There is no marker on the screen directing you to the next quest; instead, you head northwest, or far east, looking for landmarks that match what you’ve seen on the map. And there will certainly be some surprises along the way: maybe the silence swishing of a pod of dolphins before you see them, or the squawks of a killer crows ready to gouge your eyes out.

Dredging dissects these moments of rewarding exploration without losing focus on the core business of fishing and discovering new creatures. But it also masterfully balances two different tones. It contains the kind of fear and horror that creeps in, nervous eyes, after too many nights with too little sleep. It is not boiling terror and panic, but more simmering. There’s enough daylight for a bit of respite, but it never lingers too long. Dredging is the perfect kind of dark but cozy game. It can be disturbing, yes, but it never swims too far into the abyss.

Dredging laundry released March 30 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on Steam Deck using a pre-release download code from Team17. Vox Media has partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy here.