DREDGE

Introduction

DREDGE drops a nameless fisherman into a remote, fogbound archipelago, tasking him with catching and selling fish, upgrading his boat, and slowly uncovering why the locals warn against staying out past dark. Developed by Black Salt Games and published by Team17, it released 30 March 2023 for NZ$39.95, now regularly discounted, currently sitting at 60% off. Over three years on, it holds an enormous review base — 56,087 Steam reviews, Overwhelmingly Positive at roughly 95.8%, with recent sentiment running even higher at 96% across its most recent 100 English reviews. This review reads a substantial share of both the negative and positive samples, and finds something worth stating plainly up front: DREDGE's own fans largely agree with its critics about what's wrong with it. The disagreement isn't about the diagnosis — it's about whether the diagnosis matters.

A fishing loop that earns its acclaim on pure mechanics

Strip away the horror framing and DREDGE's core systems hold up entirely on their own. Casting for fish, playing out the resulting catch minigame and slotting the results into a Tetris-style boat inventory — where shape, not just weight, decides what fits — draws wide, specific praise as genuinely satisfying rather than a horror game's afterthought mechanic. Reviewers repeatedly single out the sound design and individual fish designs for real character, crediting the smaller creature work with doing more to build atmosphere than any jump scare could. One especially useful data point from the positive sample: several reviewers who say they normally struggle with horror games specifically credit DREDGE with balancing dread and unease well enough to stay enjoyable rather than overwhelming, making a strong case that this is horror built for atmosphere rather than for adrenaline — worth flagging for anyone who's avoided the genre for that reason.

The complaint that shows up on both sides of the review

Here's the genuinely unusual finding in this review's sample: DREDGE's most consistent criticism — that its first two or three hours are spectacular and the rest of the game largely just repeats those systems without developing them — doesn't only appear in the negative sample. It's inside the single highest-voted review on the entire page, a recommend with over a thousand upvotes, whose author describes an incredible first two sittings followed by a third that made the game's shortcomings impossible to ignore. It shows up again and again through the rest of the positive sample in softer form: reviewers who still recommend the game while noting the Lovecraftian premise and its side-character storylines function mostly as set-dressing, resolving corrupted-fish questlines and strange-visitor plots into very little payoff. The negative sample states the same complaint more bluntly and more often — progression narrowing down to catching fish so you can catch fish faster, main story areas shrinking as the game goes on, fetch-quest structure recurring between the stronger atmospheric beats. What makes this worth reporting carefully rather than just totalling up thumbs is that it isn't really a disagreement about facts. It's a game whose fans and critics mostly see the same thing and differ on how much a strong opening buys forgiveness for a shorter tail.

A completion rate that backs up the pacing argument

Steam's own achievement data adds a genuinely useful data point to that debate. Chapter-completion achievements step down gradually rather than falling off a cliff — 78.3% complete the first chapter, dropping steadily to 39.4% by the fifth, with 34.6% of all owners reaching at least one of the game's endings. For a five-to-eight hour game, that's a healthy completion rate, and the gradual rather than sudden decline is consistent with a game that holds attention reasonably well even as reviewers say its novelty thins. It doesn't settle whether the later chapters deliver enough new ideas — that's a matter of taste this review won't adjudicate on the reader's behalf — but it does suggest the drop-off in enthusiasm the negative sample describes doesn't translate into players abandoning the game outright.

Final Verdict

DREDGE earns its Overwhelmingly Positive standing through genuinely excellent fundamentals: a fishing-and-inventory loop that's satisfying on its own terms, sound and creature design that build real atmosphere, and a controlled approach to horror that makes the genre newly accessible to players who normally avoid it. What keeps this from a higher score is a criticism this review's sample delivers with unusual consistency from both sides of the recommend button — a genuinely spectacular opening that the rest of the game mostly repeats rather than develops, with a Lovecraftian premise that reads as atmosphere rather than a story that pays off. For a five-to-eight hour game, especially at its frequent discount price, that's a fair trade for most players. Go in expecting a tightly composed mood piece rather than an expanding mystery, and DREDGE delivers almost everything it promises.