Reseñas recientes de Ventus [4]

Must be willing to go mad
If you've come to fish, you've come to the right place. In Dredge you play as an angler settling in on an island chain, after your ship has been wrecked in fog.
Go out in morning, catch your share of the sea's bounty, and return to sell for profit. Invest the return in your ship for faster engines, brighter lights, and most of all, to catch bigger, and more.... abberant.... fish.
Care ye' that you return before night falls, and the ominous and gibbous fog rolls in. Things lurk on the sea at night, terrible and great things.

The Vibes
DREDGE is the epitomy of "Lovecraftian". Not in the bombastic, Dark Corners of the Earth-giant-monsters-and-constant-combat, kind of way. Instead it delivers subliminally. Easing into it at first, then later delivering higher and ever higher peaks of madness.
The high point of the game is its story. In it, it skirts the line between unclear and explained with precision.
For lore hounds digging up every detail they can find, this game is for you.
At the same time, for the casual angler who wants a clear line of "what to do next", this game is for you.
The game's core mechanic, fishing, will unfortunately come to feel like a chore at times. And nearing the end you'll probably find yourself with more materials than you know what to do with. But, as you grow your ship you'll too grow your courage. The natural increase in danger from more and more reckless activity lets the game keep sense of wonderful danger and foreboding.

Graphics
Graphically the style is particularly indie. Quite colourful, with beautifully drawn icons for items, fish, ancient relics, and the ensemble of characters you'll meet throughout. Dredge makes good use of the resources it asks for, and the result is a very soothing and comfortable art style, that, at the same time, leans perfectly into the uncomfortable loneliness experienced at sea.
Quaint small-town vibes are obvious in the more settled of islands, while a sense of exploration rests over the other islands groups. All marked by a soft feeling on the material of your ship, or the crest of the waves. It is by no means a demanding game for your computer.

Should you?
Yes. Full stop.
I played my first way through at a little over 10 hours. With an extremely delightful enjoyment<->time ratio. The game has been developed by a very passionate team, that obviously gets what makes a game Lovecraftian.
They have picked the finest parts of Lovecraft's mythos for inspiration.
Dredge game is not surface-level cosmic horror. In my opinion it is the full monty. The kind that leaves you with a feeling of "that wasn't so bad" once you finish, and then at night it comes creeping to your pillow like a bad dream.

I think if H. P. Lovecraft was alive today, and saw his mythos expanded upon by such creative souls as the team at Black Salt Games, he would have hated the world a little less.