Dredge is a 2023 video game developed by Black Salt Games and published by Team17 that combines genres of fishing, survival, and horror. It follows a fisherman who faces Lovecraftian creatures as he fishes and explores an open world consisting of five archipelagos. As the game progresses, the player can upgrade the character's fishing equipment and abilities. It follows a day–night cycle; the day is serene, while the night contains the game's horror elements, such as supernatural events and sea monsters.
Black Salt Games conceived Dredge as a top-down turn-based game; that notion was scrapped during the prototype phase. Not wanting Dredge to be a jump scare horror game, they worked to create a psychological thriller atmosphere. Four of the five archipelagos are based on geological formations. After development was completed, they approached various publishers before settling on Team17. Dredge was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on March 30, 2023, with versions for Android and iOS following on February 27, 2025. Two downloadable content packs (DLCs), The Pale Reach and The Iron Rig, were released in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Critics positively received Dredge, praising its gameplay, presentation, and exploration, while some complained that the fishing portions are repetitive. The game's story, horror elements, thriller undertones, and art style were also commended. Its DLCs were well received by critics. It was deemed one of the top video games of 2023 by several news outlets and was nominated for numerous awards.
Gameplay
Dredge is a fishing and survival horror video game. The player controls a fisherman as he travels by boat through an ocean. He can help inhabitants of various islands, catch regular fish and mutated versions called aberrations, such as fish with multiple eyes, and dredge for materials such as wood and metal. The player fishes by participating in quick-time mini-games; clicking the mouse reels the fish quicker. Dredge features four archipelagos surrounding the central starting region, The Marrows. Each archipelago features different fish, quests, and enemies. When selling fish, players earn more money for aberrations and fresher catch. The money can be used to repair the boat, buy crab pots, and upgrade the motors. The game also features a progression system centered on upgrading the player's boat and equipment. Players can improve features such as the engine and lights, obtain better fishing lines and nets, and expand inventory space by collecting materials and "research parts" found while fishing or completing quests. This is all part of the game's skill tree. The fisherman's abilities can also be improved by reading books. In the inventory, items are represented by icons of varying shapes and sizes, that the player can arrange to permit more storage. In the base game, the player can catch up to 128 different species of fish, each tied to specific times of day and environments.
The game takes place on a day–night cycle, with time advancing whenever the player performs actions such as sailing or fishing. During the day, the ambience is relatively peaceful; at night, horror elements emerge when a fog appears across the sea. A mechanic during these nighttime sections is the panic meter, which reflects the player's sanity. Staying out too long after dark or neglecting sleep causes the meter to rise, increasing the likelihood of supernatural events. As panic grows, rocks can appear suddenly in the water, crows may steal the player's catch, and massive sea monsters may begin pursuing the boat. The higher the meter, the more frequently these dangers occur. Dredge features a game mode that prevents enemies from hunting the player.
Plot A Fisherman sails to the coastal town of Greater Marrow, situated in a distant archipelago, to take up a job as the town's angler. While the job starts typically, the fisherman begins to encounter strange phenomena, especially at night: a strange mist, rocks that suddenly appear from nowhere, ghost ships, hostile wildlife, sea monsters, and he has a feeling of being watched. As he sails around the archipelago, he finds messages in bottles, featuring diary entries written by a newlywed woman named Julie, who recounts her arrival in the archipelago with her husband. She witnessed him dredging up from the sea floor a mysterious casket which he opened, releasing the supernatural fog that plagues the archipelago. A gargantuan sea monster called the Leviathan then awoke and destroyed their boat, killing Julie and stranding the husband and the old mayor on a small island. The Fisherman finds himself stalked by the Leviathan, which is the archipelago's guardian and is set on preventing the Fisherman from leaving the area.
The Fisherman meets the Collector, a man living alone in an island mansion. The Collector tasks the Fisherman with exploring the other archipelago islands and the ancient ruins they hide to recover several relics. The Collector uses the Book of the Deep to grant the Fisherman supernatural powers. Once the Fisherman collects the relics, he can hand them over to the Collector. When the Fisherman hands over the relics, the Collector reveals that he is Julie's husband, who recovered the Book of the Deep from the casket and discovered a ritual that could resurrect Julie. He had the Fisherman gather the relics, all personal items of Julie's, because they are required for the ritual. The Fisherman takes the Collector to the part of the ocean where Julie had drowned and performs the ritual by throwing the collected relics overboard. The ritual successfully resurrects Julie but also awakens a massive Cthulhu-like eldritch beast, destroying Greater Marrow and presumably the rest of the world. If the Fisherman finds the old mayor in one of the five camps scattered across the map, a new ending is unlocked. This involves speaking with the lighthouse keeper and discovering that the Collector is a figment of the Fisherman's own imagination, an avatar of his own repressed memories and guilt over Julie's death. Rather than follow the Collector's bidding, the Fisherman heads out to sea and throws the Book of the Deep into the ocean, resulting in him, the book, and his boat being swallowed by the Leviathan. Afterwards, the supernatural fog plaguing the archipelago disappears. Alternatively, you can proceed with the first stated ending. The only difference will be that the pronouns will become second person.
The Pale Reach The Fisherman heads south of the archipelago to discover the Pale Reach, a frozen biome that appears and disappears every few years. He helps a nature photographer capture a photo of a ravenous creature resembling a narwhal and assembles an icebreaker ram for his boat. The Fisherman then pursues the trail of an Antarctic expedition crew that disappeared nearly 100 years ago while investigating the Pale Reach. He finds journal entries that reveal that the Captain, Navigator, and Boatswain of the crew became enthralled by the ravaged and still-living remains of an enormous eldritch monster trapped in the ice. As the crew attempted to free the creature under the promise of treasure, the First Officer led a mutiny, which ended in most of the crew dying or fleeing the Pale Reach. Four men remained and became trapped in the ice, still bound to the creature and unable to die. After finding enchanted ice axes, the Fisherman frees the men from their torment, with their deaths killing the creature as well.
The Iron Rig The Fisherman comes across an oil rig owned by the Ironhaven Company and meets two of its chief staff, the Foreman and the Scientist. The Foreman asks the Fisherman to recover lost supply shipments so they can complete the construction of the oil rig, while the Scientist requests that the Fisherman collect samples of the local wildlife for study. The Fisherman brings back enough supplies for the Foreman to finish construction of the oil rig, and they drill into the sea floor. This causes fissures to open up on the sea floor, releasing a dark ooze and species thought to be extinct. The Scientist has the Fisherman collect samples of the new species; eating them causes the Scientist to mutate into a monster, and he escapes to the ocean. The Executive arrives and orders the Foreman to continue drilling, even though it angers the local sea monsters. Fearful of the monsters, but equally fearful of the Executive, the Foreman asks the Fisherman to sabotage the oil rig's defense system to convince the Executive to abort the drilling. With the defense system down, a tentacled sea monster attacks the oil rig, destroying the drill before being eaten by the Leviathan. The Executive flees via helicopter, and the Foreman agrees to continue providing the Fisherman with advanced equipment until he and the rest of the oil rig crew can evacuate.
Development Dredge was developed by the New Zealand-based independent studio Black Salt Games and published by Team17. It was created using the Unity game engine. The studio initially experimented with three prototypes: a real-time strategy game, a stealth game, and Dredge. After playtesting them with friends and colleagues, Dredge was considered the most enjoyable and selected for further development. The original concept, written in two paragraphs, was inspired by games like Papers, Please (2013) and Moonlighter (2018), with the developers aiming to combine at least two core gameplay loops into a single experience. Early version of Dredge was conceived as a top-down turn-based game.
Design
The prototype initially included only the starting area, The Marrows. The first six months of development were spent refining that region, as well as controls and movement systems. Once the foundation was established, the team developed four additional biomes. Producer Nadia Thorne stated that each biome took roughly two to three months to complete. The open-world structure that allows players to travel freely between regions was partly inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017). Programmer and writer Joel Mason explained that while the archipelagos can be explored in any order, they were subtly designed to encourage a particular progression. Gale Cliffs draws on Scandinavian aesthetics, while Stellar Basin was inspired by blue holes (marine sinkholes), Twisted Strand by mangrove swamps, and Devil's Spine by Volcanoes. The team planned to add an ice biome, but postponed it until it was used in The Pale Reach downloadable content pack (DLC).
Although Black Salt Games wanted Dredge to have narrative depth, the small size of the team meant they had to be selective in scope. Early ideas included having characters represent different stages of grief, but as development progressed, the team shifted toward a broader mystery-driven story that better suited the game's structure. To support this approach, they adopted Yarn Spinner, an open-source dialogue tool that helped shape much of the game's narrative framework. The main story was further expanded through messages in bottles and quest descriptions. Rather than relying on voice acting, the developers chose to have characters communicate through stylized vocal sounds.