DREDGE
Moderate overall intensityWhat's in it
The story centres on a newlywed woman's death at sea and a stranded survivor, pieced together from recovered diary entries, alongside a fisherman whose sanity unravels.
At night a fog brings sea monsters that hunt the boat and a rising panic meter that triggers hallucinations and phantom hazards; the player evades these threats rather than fighting them.
Sea monsters pursue and can damage or sink the player's boat and sudden hazards appear at night, but the threat is stylised with no blood, visible wounds or gore.
Catching fish is the core loop, done through a reeling mini-game with no graphic butchery shown.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
DREDGE is a single-player fishing adventure with a horror undercurrent. You take over as a small town's fisherman, sailing an open archipelago to catch fish, dredge the sea floor for salvage, upgrade your boat, and complete quests for the islanders. By day the ocean is calm; after dark a fog rises and the game turns to survival horror, as a sanity meter climbs and sea monsters and hostile wildlife begin to hunt your boat. The story, told through found diary entries, follows a newlywed woman killed when an ancient sea creature was awakened, and threads themes of death, loss and creeping madness through an otherwise cozy loop. There is no sexual content, nudity, profanity, substances or online interaction.
How it's framed
The game deliberately avoids jump scares in favour of a psychological, slow-building dread: the tension comes from being small and fragile in dark water, managing a panic meter, and evading rather than defeating what stalks you. Its darker material — a death, an awakened guardian, cult-like figures demanding offerings — sits mostly in lore and found writing rather than being shown graphically, framing the sinister undertow as mystery to uncover.
Details
- Developer
- Black Salt Games
- Publisher
- Team17
- Released
- Mar 30, 2023
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