Dredge Review: A Contender for Indie of the Year

what's up and welcome to the Single Player Experience Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Sebastian Malden, and in this episode I'm gonna talk about a fishing game that is a strong contender for Indie Game of the Year. Indies have a way of bringing interesting and often unique concepts to gamers. The latest addition to stand out in that regard is bridge. So what makes this game stand out? And who is this game for? Find out right after the intro DJ start the intro. Mine. so I grew up, but I haven't grown out of the mentality about fishing, and that's what surprised me about the game dredge on paper. This would be just as boring as fishing was at the lake all those years ago, but it's a game that I legit cannot stop playing. Let's dive into it. Let's start with the narrative. In Dredge, you play as a fisherman who is shipwrecked and drifts to a strange island town where they give him a new boat. In exchange, you have to work off the cost of the boat by fishing and running errands for the townspeople. That's the story on the surface, but there's a overarching mystery surrounding the area and the town itself. As you run errands from people, you receive more answers about what's going on. A factor of a story with a good mystery is when you get answers, but those answers create more questions that you want to be answered. That's one of the best traits about Dredge the game. Supernatural story is full of rich suspense and lore. This could have just been a game about fishing, but kudos to the developers Black Salt Games for providing a narrative that really sticks with. In dredge, you control your boat. I traverse the waters around a series of islands while fishing and dredging up materials. These materials are used to upgrade your boat and sometimes there are fetch quest items. The game also features a day and night cycle. During the day, everything is calm and peaceful. However, during the night, the seas occupants become more aggressive and dangerous. In dredge, you fish and dredge by doing a series of timing based mini games. Different fish in the game have different mini games that you have to do to catch them. The game features a lot of different fish, so there's a lot of different mini games that you kind of have to get used to. Thankfully, this leads to the game not feeling very repetitive. After catching the fish and filling up your boat, you then take the fish back to the market to sell them. You can also fill up your ship with items that you find along your journey. These items are some that you can either sell back to the market or you can take these items back to people who are looking for them to complete their quest and further the overall plot of the story. Now let's talk about the art style. It's close, but an argument can be made that the best quality about the game is this art style. During the day, especially around sunrise, this game is absolutely beautiful in a very tranquil way. On the flip side of things, at night, you have to combat a thick fog and haziness as you tread through an increasingly dangerous waters, the dangerous fish and the creatures are marked with this ominous red hue. The game's art style truly makes you think and question if things. There or not, and it kind of makes you wonder whether or not you're in danger or you should deviate from your path or keep going towards your overall goal. Drench has a very unique and distinguished art style. I honestly can't remember another game that I can say looks like this game. It kind of seems like a painting come to life when you're out there on the open seas. In contrast, when you're talking to the people and the villagers, it kind of seems like a comic book. Those kind of two different art styles mesh together really well in this. So let's talk about the music now. Dredges score is absolutely fantastic. There is a gentle instrumental that plays in the morning that feels hopeful and calming. On the flip side, though, at night, there's instrumentals that range from providing unnerving suspense to a sense of impending doom. The music flawlessly amplifies everything that's going on in the. Now let's talk about the game's flaws. There really isn't much to complain about with this game. A small nitpick though, is that the boats feel slow kind of movement wise. Even when you upgrade your ship, it still feels a bit sluggish. I understand that this was most likely by design to maximize the effectiveness of the day and night cycle, but it still kind of feels a little slow in parts. But like I said, it's just a small nit. So overall, should you play dredge? Yes, this is an easy recommendation, especially if you're the type of gamer that's looking for an addicting game with an intriguing mystery. Then this one is just for you. The art style and the soundtrack are outstanding and it doesn't have many flaws. While dredge doesn't make me change my mind about going fishing again, this is the closest that I've ever come to reconsidering. In this show, we practice the 10 games backlog rule. In this practice, you log down 10 games, those games are gonna be your video game backlog. To be as productive as you possibly can be, we recommend that you only play three games at one time. One single player narrative game, one game that's gonna be your chill and relaxed game. And another game that's going to be your palate cleanser game, which is a game that you play when you're not in the mood for your other narrative. When you complete or get tired of one game, it leaves the backlog list. Then you decide which new game is added to the list, and which game on the list advances to your active three games. So that is the game recommendation of the week that you should consider adding to your backlog. If you want me or my community of gamers to give you feedback on your backlog list, then join us in the single Player Experience Discord server. Once you're in, feel free to share your video game backlog list our talk about good single player game experiences that you've had lately. The link to join the free single player experience Discord server is in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode, and I hope to catch you in the next one. Peace.