DREDGE is a Lovecraftian fishing game, which is more enjoyable than anything with that description deserves to be. Indeed, there’s a kind of hilarity that it is the second Lovecraftian fishing game I played in 2025. The first was Fallout 76 expansion Gone Fission, which I enjoyed but didn’t have much in the way of story despite its hints of cosmic horror. Dredge, by contrast, has massive depth if you look past its relatively simple cartoonish art style and gameplay.
The premise is you are the Fisherman. You wreck your small fishing boat up against a small New England island village. The Mayor spots you the money for the repairs but puts you in debt that you can do nothing but repay him by fishing for the most lucrative catches you can. Just don’t go out at night (you’ll have to go out at night), because that is when the monsters come out.
What follows is a lengthy story where you encounter the mysterious Collector who tells you to retrieve his lost items that are spread across the map in multiple locations. The Collector possesses magical abilities that he’s willing to lend to you the more you assist him in his quest. Really, you’ll want to do at least a couple of his quests early because the Haste spell is the only way to make the travel times remotely bearable.
I think part of what makes the game so effective is it’s mastery of building tension. The cutse-y art style and relaxing minigame is something that leaves you ill-prepared when the fog settles in and there are endless numbers of invincible monsters descending upon you. The subtler scares are well-realized too with things like discovering a nearby fishing boat is actually a giant angler fish with a tugboat “hat” or discovering an entire island lagoon is nothing more than the mouth of a gigantic lamprey’s mouth.
There’s some exploration and side content that is worth doing but much of the game is just the process of traveling to and fro your various destinations. You can expand the journey by picking up two additional campaign areas with The Iron Rig and The Pale Reach. These add an oil rig to the north of the Map and an arctic adventure in the bottom. There’s a third DLC called the Blackstone Key that gives a few items to make gameplay easier.
Few of the characters are named with most of them having titles for what their job is. This adds to the atmosphere as you really don’t get a sense of what this land is about or who it’s people is. The sidequests are fairly one-note but I really enjoyed some of them that have unexpected endings. Like if you give an aberrant fish to the Fishmonger to eat or a package to a dockworker.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed Dredge and recommend it to people who don’t normally think a horror fishing game would appeal to them. The handling of the strange and unnatural as well as fear in the game is surprisingly nuanced. I think the cozy New England environments, the tropical island zone, and other pretty parts of the game make the disturbing “wrongness” of other elements more effective. Plus, the “bad ending” is one of the best depictions of Cthulhu I’ve seen and is truly a mountain that walks.
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