Catch and Release: A Review of "Dredge" and "Dave the Diver"

Despite surface similarities, Dave the Diver and Dredge couldn't be more different in their design philosophies.

As their names suggest, Dave the Diver and Dredge are both fishing games at heart. Their core gameplay loops involve exploring fictional bodies of water and catching an increasingly wide variety of fish while avoiding danger and managing inventory to maximize profits. Both games have received overwhelming praise from players and press, so despite not being remotely interested in real-life fishing, I decided to sink some time into each. In my time with Dave the Diver and Dredge, it became clear that the two games are polar opposites of one another, with the former attempting to be a maximalist jack-of-all-trades and the latter striving to be a mechcanically focused master of one. 

Dredge's primary gameplay has two components: timing-based fishing and light inventory management

Just as twin films with similar subject matters occasionally pop up alongside one another, Dave the Diver and Dredge launched within months of each other and both are built around relatively simple fishing mini-games. Dave the Diver emphasizes rapid, repeated button presses, such as hammering the A button or tilting left analog sick from side-to-side, in a way that vacillates between annoying and aggravating. One the other hand, Dredge's fishing mini-game only utilizes the X button, with different species requiring different timing patterns signified by green bars, dots, or rings. Fish are automatically reeled in, but pressing X when the spinning cursor is over a green section will rapidly speed up the process. Missing an input causes the line's progress to halt or occasionally reverse. It's a more rhythmic approach than Dave the Diver's madcap mashfest, which made it less troublesome in the long run. With that being said, both games offer options to simplify their respective fishing mechanics, so perhaps this is a non-issue if a player finds either game's controls particularly vexing. 

In Dave the Diver, some stubborn fish require additional inputs

Sea life isn't the only thing worth catching: both games' fictional oceans are rife with upgrade materials with which to enhance one's fishing experience, and the ways in which players gain new abilities and tools in Dave the Diver and Dredge are equally satisfying. With that said, the two games progress in very different directions, with the former introducing a wide variety of combat options and the latter maintaining a strict focus on fishing. 

I would go so far as to say that Dave the Diver basically becomes an action adventure due to the frequent encounters with lionfish, barracudas, and sharks. Players begin the game fairly weak, with only basic diving gear and limited options for defense. At this point, it's best to cut and run when faced with danger until one can upgrade their arsenal to include tranquilizer darts, sniper rifles, and more. This is where the combat becomes a double-edge sword*, though. The aforementioned creatures are quite fun to fight, especially when a once-terrifying tiger shark gets turned into sashimi by a 40mm grenade, but Dave the Diver's scripted action sequences are categorically miserable experiences that distract from the core fishing gameplay and render the player's hard-won arsenal completely useless. Several bosses can only be defeated by specific gimmicks in their arena, and one particularly annoying stealth sequence even featured invincible enemies. The combat isn't fundamentally bad, but combined with Dave's sluggish underwater movement and an oxygen meter that serves as a timer, HP bar, and stamina bar, it never stops feeling sloppy.

*There are also swords, but those are only temporary items

Certain nighttime events in Dredge cause "panic," making navigation more difficult and dangerous

In stark contrast, Dredge has no combat whatsoever, and all upgrades directly affect one's fishing efficiency. Speedier engines help players make the most out of every trip, while trawling nets and crab pots provide sources of passive income while exploring. It felt great to gradually transform my dinky dinghy into a seaworthy vessel, even if it was a bit too easy to gather the parts needed to expand my hull space and create more hardpoints for gear. The real challenge emerges at end of the day. When the sun sets, Dredge adds survival horror elements into the mix, and the only way to avoid the things that go splash in the night is to run. This can get annoying at times, but it is at least consistent with the game's Lovecraftian theme. The protagonists in The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth weren't exactly action heroes after all. Since fighting isn't an option, Dredge makes things interesting by subtly toying with the world itself at night. Perhaps one's headlights will inexplicably shut off and need to be flipped on again. A rock may suddenly appear where there was none earlier that night and cause hull damage if the boat is recklessly speeding through the night. Twists like these add tension to nighttime exploration, which in turn forces player to weigh risk and reward when choosing to stay out late to fish. 

Another area in which the games differ is what happens after a successful expedition. In Dave the Diver's case, fishing doesn't even account for half of its gameplay. After two to three dives, the day's catch is brought to a sushi restaurant, where the fish are then prepared and served to hungry customers. The menu is fully customizable each night, though certain VIP guests and festival events will require the player to collect specific ingredients. Once the restaurant opens for business, dishes must be brought to the correct customer at the counter, but at the same time, other customers may order drinks, wasabi will need to be replenished, and spots at the counter will need to be cleaned up for the next patrons. All of this is daunting and hectic at first, but players soon gain the ability to hire assistants to keep up with increased demand. I ultimately found the restaurant gameplay to be an enjoyable way to foster player expression make one's daily income feel truly earned.

Dave the Diver's sushi minigame is hectic yet surprisingly engaging

Dredge, on the other hand, is a fairly straightforward affair in the sense that everything comes back to fishing. Players make money by selling fish to merchants, and that money goes into buying upgrades for the ship. Even the light horror elements become scary because of how they impact the player's ability to catch and haul fish. There are several side quests in each area, but these are universally (and disappointingly) fetch quests that consist of bringing specific specimens or items obtained through the fishing minigame to certain NPCs. Dredge's open world can be exciting to explore, but once you take a few in-game days to acclimate to each new environment, the magic wears off, and it's right back to the same fishing gameplay. This repetition started to drag after I reached the fourth of the game's five zones. The lone quest-giver in the area gave me two nearly identical missions: go around these islands and find some items. Righto, good sir. When I returned to proudly present said treasures, the man gave me a third fetch quest to go catch specific fish to make bait—fish that I had already caught and sold many times over at this point. This is where I had to put the game down. While I initially enjoyed the simple yet clever fishing mechanics, it was clear that the game was running out of ideas when it came to gameplay.

Dredge's side-content mostly consists of fetch quests.

One might prefer Dave the Diver over Dredge for the way that the sushi restaurant extends the fishing experience into a new context. However, Dave the Diver continues to relentlessly introduce new mechanics, and just as fishing makes up less than 50% of its gameplay loop, the same can be said of the restaurant as well. The game makes the fatal error of trying to do too much and loses some of its identity in the process. I already covered the ways in which the game jumps the shark (ha) with mandatory combat and stealth sequences, but that's just scratching the surface. Almost every character in its cast comes with some sort of mini-game or quest, with only a select few like photography and farming enhance the diving and cooking gameplay respectively. Others, like the J-pop idol rhythm game, the tamagotchi, and the assortment of casino games, are pointless distractions. The worst characters are the ones who butt in, unannounced, to interrupt the player. The game aims to have a compelling story and world, but it shoehorns in dozens of ideas that intrude upon the core gameplay. I've had dives randomly cut short because I stumbled across a random side-quest that took me to the surface upon completion, even when had time left on the clock and needed to catch certain fish for an upcoming event on the calendar. One story mission went so far as to skip the entire restaurant minigame for the night in favor of delivering exposition via a visual novel segment, which meant that I went into the next day unable to upgrade any of my equipment. Where Dredge's systems became repetitive and same-y, Dave the Diver's become cluttered and burdensome.

So would I recommend Dave the Diver and/or Dredge? Well, neither is catastrophically bad to the point that I think folks should steer clear of them completely. Each has their strong suits and weaknesses that, at the end of the day, just so happen to place the games on complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Dredge is a steady, even-keeled fishing experience that, despite its light horror motifs, starts to run out of steam in the final third. On the other hand, Dave the Diver mixes genres in increasingly bold and flashy ways until it starts to buckle under its own weight. I could try to quantify my experiences in dollars-per-hour or by tallying scores, but perhaps the most succinct remark I could make about this pair of quirky fishing games is that both were good enough that I wished I enjoyed them more.