Dredge is on sale half-off and you should play it but also what the fuck, capitalism
It sucks when you wanna be like "Oh damn, Dredge is only $12 on EGS you should definitely pick that up if you haven't played it" and then remembering how evil Epic is and how the last thing you wanna do is give pennies to out of touch with reality billionaires like Tim Sweeney but we're in the capitalism hellhole so what do you do? Buy it from Steam where it's also 50% off (which also is run by an out of touch billionaire?) Or pick it up on Switch where instead it goes to a megacorp that constantly goes out of its way to show the true power of bored lawyers? (And don't get me started on Microsoft, I've smashed that 'BDS is begging you to boycott them while they participate in gennociding Palestinians' drum to pieces at this point....not to mention the whole endless layoffs bit).
I know. I KNOW!!!
The further you go down this rabbit hole the more it feels like it's turning into that age-old shitpost about the musician who didn't wanna use drum samples so they recorded real drums but didn't wanna use drums they didn't make themselves so they got animals to get skin from and long story short they raise sheep now instead of making music.
I wish more devs were comfortable with (or allowed to due to publishing deals) either sell direct or use Itch.io. We went through this on the music side for a while before streaming destroyed the ecosystem; selling your merch directly at shows or through your own website (or bandcamp as an alternative) was always the best possible method of fan support, with iTunes or other digital stores obviously having more volume but higher cut being taken away from you.
Anyway.
Dredge was one of my "games of the year" for 2023. A surprise hit. I was mad that a fishing game had such a stranglehold on my time but it clicked in such a satisfying way. I even made Dredge themed pancakes at one point?? I'm not into horror at all so I was hesitant but it does a very good job of trawling the line between 'sense of dread' and 'ok things will be ok after all' without resorting to gruesome violence or excessive jump scares.
Thinking back, I only had two jump scares in my time with the game; one night I was taking a risk sailing to a destination further than I should have in the hopes I could avoid a fish in my hold going rotten instead of sleeping for the night and I ran straight into what can only be described as a 'ghost shark' that absolutely wrecked my boat. The other jump scare was seeing the game on this Polygon list of 'The best cozy games to play right now' because what the fuck lmao
Also worth pointing out that this game has the distinction of being one of the only video games I've ever played where there's a realistic gap between the lightning flash and the thunder rumble. What is it with visual media and timing the flash and rumble at the same time? Always??? I get that it's more striking (lol) but it's absolutely immersion ruining for me and I think more devs should cater to that. Obviously.
What's funny is that I got into Dredge kind of late in its release year, it was a March game and I think I didn't play it until near the late summer; this had the benefit that by the time the Pale Reach DLC launched in November it was perfectly timed to me getting near the end of the base game and a fresh set of challenges being welcome. Plus that monster in the DLC is so fucking rad.
The Iron Rig DLC that came out later is fucking huuuuge and I think benefits from being approached after doing all the base game and Pale Reach DLC first but I know that's because that's how I experienced it. If you fresh installed today with all the DLC available I don't know what that experience would be like.
Probably good though, because this game rules. Mechanics, art, music, story - it's so well crafted and I wish Black Salt the best in whatever they're cooking next. A film version apparently?
Thanks for reading! Here's your end-of-post cat photo
Her name is Skitters