Dredge - Call Of The Unknown Depths

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I never got around to reading any of Lovecraft's books, I did want to, but it seems like a lot of media is following a trend of anything cosmic horror inspired mostly his works, so already got spoiled before I could.

Just the idea of cosmic horror seems interesting enough, but to fully evoke the feelings of dread and horror lying beyond the unknown, in a video game, that takes a lot of courage. For what it looks like, the developers of this game, Dredge, really did make this creep up on me as I was playing something really unsettling.

As it made exploration rewarding, it also made it a complete daunting task to venture further into the seas. As I was against a map filled with all kinds of territorial threats of the ghastly kind, perceived both physically or psychologically. I would have stopped playing if horror was its main thing, but it wasn't really. The intrigue and sense of mystery really had me going for hours, despite how bad it is for my health.

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Waking up in the middle of a small town, the mayor debriefs me about my situation where I lost my ship earlier. He loans me a boat, but with the condition of using my earnings from selling fish to pay him back for it.

Getting the hang of steering a boat slow, just moving at 9–10 knots. The in-game hours going by, and soon as it got dark, everything else got less clear, there was a fog right infront of me, with limited visibility I was trying to catch many fish as possible. I was warned not to stay in the dark for too long. Out of nowhere, I spot another boat, glowing in yellow.

I was not informed about whether I should stay still or run away from it. The howling noise, the eyes popping out, the audio changing to something really dreadful scared me off to run. Thankfully, I wasn't caught, and made it back safely to town.

There was also my sanity meter, which gets worse when I roam at night, getting close to red siren zones, the light going off, and so on, various elements that can affect me psychologically. Worse my sanity gets, the more schizophrenic the sea gets, and it is one of the big challenges in playing this game.

Most of the fishing mini-games involve timing press, with the intention of doing the best so that game time isn't wasted. Of course, all of these tasks seem mundane enough that I did slip up once in a while. There are opportune timings which highlighted by gold color meaning I get better fishes.

But the ones to really look out for are the mutated fishes. These can be found in certain rural areas, but most of the time, they are present during night. Also, fishes do rot, so they value more the earlier sold. There are ways around it, but that also involves buying new equipment for the ship, as well as upgrading. Books provided also increase my fishing speed.

The other important factor is treasure hunting. I mean, it's called Dredge for a reason. Finding lost items like glasses, rings, jewels, and so on before selling to a trader or filling up requests. Upgrade items are also collected, and I put them in my storage when I reach a town to save up space.

Through my journey, after going outbounds of The Marrow, I found a stranger in black robe asking me to give him a few fish. Don't know where this was going, but it seemed grim to me. The next guy I interacted with was stuck on an island wanting to go back to civilization. After I was done transporting him, I did other odd jobs involving carrying suspicious character. But my story really started when I stumbled onto a mysterious figured named the Collector.

His tasks given to me involved collecting relics from various locales in the map. It's never specified if his quests in the game are the ones I have to follow, but judging by the arduous nature of it, I tried following his orders.

And this is where doing chores either let me to finding spooky stuff or adds thematic insight into the declining state of things around me. There are ship debris in certain places, ancient relics needing fish sacrifices, ghost whispers, things entering my boat and infecting fishes, etc. Kind of locations that makes me think "why on earth do all of this co-exist in the 1920s era based locale here?".

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After being done with exploring The Marrow, I first head out to Devil's Spine. And also, thanks to the extra motor I installed, my speed was up by 23 Knots. There were new types of fish to discover and fish out, in order to that, I had to install Rods that allowed me to catch different varieties.

Upon arriving to my destination, a lot of things stood out. The distance between the ship station, and the local spot, was far. And there was no town, just a cult shrine filled with fanatics. The area had geysers, volcanic hotzones, and wasn't traversable, because there was a giant fish blocking the area, my ship sunk once being hit by him several times and I had to restart the game.

It felt impossible, because the other options involved upgrading my boat, but that was a pretty big grind and lastly for me, the location felt like it was a lost cause. So, I went elsewhere instead, off to Gale Cliffs. Which looked less hostile.

From there, I did find 2 local population spots and a station close together. One of the residents gave me a quest to do, and before I went in, hoping this was going to be easy. Another giant fish showed up.

I tried different approaches and one worked, by baiting him to get out the place he was guarding. I dredged up the quest item, gave them the item, and unlocked a dynamite. Using that dynamite, I was able to access a ruin blocked by boulders, and from there, I finally got a relic. All that hard work, my excitement went through the roof. Off to the next place, Twisted Strand.

I was pretty much fully aware at this point that another monster was going to show up. But plot twist, there were 3 of them. The tree veins came alive and would close off certain paths. Around this maze of a swamp, I panicked a lot and was circling around. Till I found the exit.

I went back in after a while, and found a stranded plane pilot, whose crew was taken out by these creatures. He tasked me with finding fish bait, and mortar parts to take them out. One by one, they were gone, and I finally received the second relic.

I was busy talking about these quests, I never explained how I managed to survive this entire time. You'd be remiss if you thought I got used to it. There was no getting used to the strangeness and cosmic horror that this game has to provide.

Lots of fishing, selling them off, inventory managing, dredging for parts, upgrading with said parts, and researching for new ones. In fact, playing the game become more exciting because of how far I went doing all this. They are so many new species of fishes to collect, filling up the encyclopedia to distract me.

I returned to the collector with 2 relics I found, he later bestowed me with two abilities. Haste allows me to boost up my boat speed, and Manifest rewind me back to where I was 10 seconds ago. All of a sudden, this game became less grounded and more insane. The bait I can now buy, and abilities unlocked are now easier options to tackle with the guardians of each areas.

I've arrived to Stellar Basin, and this was how far I went as of now. There was a lot of charm standing on top of the horror underbelly. I really did feel like a sea-goer, going to places I shouldn't. Making a lot of newfound discoveries.

It didn't seem like a long game, and yet in that short timespan, I did a lot. I will return back to playing, so that I can exchange 3 different crabs in a crab altar for some more weird stuff to collect.

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