Wow, this adventure fishing game blew me away! I didn’t know what to really expect but was welcomed in the creepy but also relaxing world of DREDGE. No missable achievements takes around 19h to 100%. DLC is needed for all the achievements.
DREDGE – Base Game
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 15h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, this guide will help you get all the achievements and if you need help with finding the last few fish you’re searching for, this guide will help you out.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Not really, finding all the fish might take some time and patience
DLC-Only achievements: Yes
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Wow, this adventure fishing game blew me away! I didn’t know what to really expect and was a bit scared of the “horror” part of DREDGE, but gladly I never felt scared. It has an intriguing story and is somewhat just a relaxing and addictive fishing game.
You play as a fisherman who crashes just before the lighthouse on your way to a small city. The mayor helps you with a new ship, but it is just like the well-known “Nook”, you have to pay him back. Gladly he doesn’t take it to the extremes as Nook does and it is quite easy to pay him off. You can even buy upgrades and other items while you are in debt.
You’ll be warned to not go sailing during the night, and you get hints that something scary is going on… but what if someone needs a fish that only can be found during the night? Or what if you have to travel such a distance that it is night by the time you get there? The developers did such a great job of making you feel disorientated and a bit on edge while sailing through the night. But the more upgrades you get, the easier it will be.
Next to the main quest that unfolds while playing you will find a number of side quests. One is with a dog, for which the devs made a special code so that it would not get lost on the sea when your ship gets hit by something. To learn more about this, see this article by Rock Paper Shotgun.
The game is totally driven by the missions. You have no time limit but the story will not go further if you don’t try to finish those missions, so don’t spend too much time grinding gold and materials as it isn’t needed.
What a little gem is DREDGE, and to make it even better, it has no missable achievements. So achievement hunters like me don’t have to worry about missing out on anything. I spoke with one of the developers beforehand and he told me he doesn’t like missable achievements himself, so they made sure none of them are. I would recommend finding as many different fish as possible while playing through the game, the less cleaning up afterward you have to do.
I have seen so many posts on the internet in the past few days about how amazing this game is. When Ryan Brown innocently asked on Twitter people’s favorite indie game of 2023 so far, so many people responded with DREDGE, and I can totally see why and agree with it. It is still early in the year and just anything can happen, but I would highly recommend giving DREDGE a go and experiencing this somewhat relaxing while also creepy game.
DREDGE – The Pale Reach
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 3 to 4 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don’t need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: Yes
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: A little bit but you can do stuff to improve the chances
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
It has been a few months after I played the base game and I was a bit scared I forgot how the game was played, but within minutes I felt right at home again on my trusty ship… although it did fail me one time during the DLC. (PSSTT that was my own fault, but don’t tell them 😉 )
Playing more DREDGe made me feel so appreciative again of how a game about fishing can have so much more story, be addictive, and have just awesome mechanics. The DLC gives you a new island, with a new mystery to solve. It is as big as the other islands, so if you already played a bit of the game, you kinda know what you’re in for. It has one main questline and 4 sidequests.
A bunch of the 8 new DLC achievements you’ll unlock by completing those quests. There are others for collecting all fish, as well as their “weird” forms. And there is one achievement that does something with a new type of item you’ll unlock.
Most time of those 3/4 hours will be spent on finding the rare forms, but the new book you can find by one of the sidequests will help increase the % to catch them, don’t forget to equip as many items as fit that increase the percentages on rare catches. And if you don’t mind a bit of superstition… there is a topic on the DREDGE steam forum, it seems to help if you post there :P. What I also did when finding the last 2 is listening to this awesome song by Dan Bull: I’m heading out. The inspiration for that song was this game and it is just so good!
I had a lot of fun to return to the world of DREDGE. I was quite harsh on the main character by not sleeping that much but we managed to get to the finish line :P.
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This review for DREDGE was updated on 17 November 2023, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 48 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.
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