By day, you’re free to find fishing spots where shoals of quarry await to be hoisted aboard your ship for you to sell upon your return to society, assuming you’ve invested in the right rod, net, or crab pot to catch them. This duality is what defines the Dredge experience. As things progress and you travel further afield, towards uniquely themed areas with names like Stellar Basin, Twisted Strand, and Devil’s Spine, you’ll come to view them differently. At first, they’ll only glitter with the prospect of discovery, as you stick to the area sheltered by the friendly shadow of Greater Marrow’s lighthouse and creep back to its harbour before night falls. The waters surrounding the five archipelagos that form this world are where you’ll spend the overwhelming majority of your time playing it. So, having left the comfort of social interactions behind in your port of choice, you emerge from the shallows and begin your daily conquest of the high seas, the solitary explorer of an untamed unknown.

The modest cast of characters that bring the game’s world to life are all landlubbers. From the moment you, a faceless fisherman behind the controls of a puny vessel that, no matter how many times you upgrade it, never ceases to be dwarfed by its surroundings, depart the dock you’ve been moored at while you sleep, you are completely alone. Perhaps this is what he thinks about as he departs the isle underneath a beautiful sunset, turning on his defenceless craft’s lights and praying that he’ll make it back to civilisation before the whispers lead him to start seeing things that aren’t really there.ĭredge is a game that thrives on isolation. The fisherman understands, just as he did when shown a carving of the crab after watching the figure place the heart of a Tarpon upon its tongue and calmly swallow. Then it points to a diagram showing another deep sea specimen. Having finished its meal, it utters three words to the fisherman. The figure takes the helpless creature, exposes its soft underbelly and then mercilessly begins to rake out its innards with long-white fingernails, ravenously devouring them as it does so. It’s a horseshoe crab, freshly caught in a submerged pot earlier that day, one of the many rewards of a week spent deploying pots and casting rods into the murky depths of a swamp. The haggard fisherman emerges onto the deck of his battered vessel and offers something to the hooded being. Bobbing on the waves that gently crash against the shore, the tiny craft docks beside some rocks, atop which is perched a mysterious grey-skinned figure, bedecked in a purple robe that obscures its visage. A lone fishing boat sails towards an isolated island.

Sky in the deep review