Summary:
A unique kind of fishing game: cosy and smoothing during the daytime, cosmic horror and stressful at night. It takes around 10 hours to complete the main quests, and double the amount to 100%. I recommend it cautiously. If you are not daunted by the price, the Complete Edition offers the best experience.

Goodies:
+ Well-polished and arguably feature-complete after more than one year's updates and two major DLCs.
+ The different mechanics are all easy to pick up.
+ Top-notch art and sound design and soundtrack.
+ Amazing Lovecraftian atmosphere.
+ Passive mode and other accessibility options.
+ An captivating open world divided into 7 beautiful regions, each with a vastly distinct environment and types of fish (more than 200 kinds in the game!).
+ Very satisfying boat driving and water physics.

Downsides:
- Not much evolution in terms of gameplay or plots; you basically repeat the same kind of mini-games / fetch quests / farming throughout the whole game.
- The upgrades of equipment are fairly incremental and utterly underwhelming.
- For a game with so many collectibles, there is no in-game tracking system; one has to rely on online guides or maps.
- Extremely fragmentary lore.
- Flat NPC design: insipid character arcs which rarely intertwine (NPCs rarely have reactions to the events outside their quests).
- Only possible to fast travel to the centre of the map. Even with the full-upgraded ship, it is a slog to travel between regions again and again, especially at night when visibility is highly reduced.
- No manual save.
- In the late game, you will have tons of money but almost nothing to buy. This is exacerbated in the second DLC, where craftable equipments require raw materials that you cannot buy directly (only obtainable via dredging or farming).
- - - Particularly highly priced, especially the two DLCs with a debatably small amount of content and boring story; the complete edition costs twice as much as most indie games.

More details follow; you are also highly encouraged to visit the devs' Youtube channel , which has a dozen of one-minute-long videos showcasing various mechanics (e.g. fishing, inventory, time management) and major in-game regions.

Gameplay structure:
* A playthrough consists of finishing a set of main quests, which guide you to each main area of the open world. The quests (both main and side ones) are mostly independent and can be completed out of order. They are mainly fetch quests: fetch/deliver me these fish or those objects from/to point X.
* Fishing (by rod) and dredging are mainly based on several kinds of QTE mini-games; the principle is more or less the same: push the button when the moving dots are in the indicated zone to accelerate fishing.
* Throughout the game, you drive a fish boat. Fish, material, trinkets, equipment, etc, all have a fixed form and occupy a certain number of slots; you need to fit them into the storage of your boat like playing Tetris.
* Money and material earned from quests or selling fish are necessary for upgrading your boat (more space to hold more goods or larger equipment, better equipment for more types of fish, higher cruising speed, etc).
* Fishing/dredging + selling + upgrading form the main gameplay loop.

More about the fishing elements:
* There is a day-night cycle; time advances when fishing, driving, or installing equipment. Some fish only spawn during the night.
* There are also passive ways of fishing by using trawl nets and crab pots.
* Fishing spots appear as bubbling water; each spot contains one kind of fish, which can be guessed from the silhouettes under the bubble. The spyglass allows determining the kind of fish in a bubble from far away, saving you the trouble of approaching.
* The number of available fish in a spot is limited; once depleted, it takes some time for the spot to respawn.
* The position of all the spots for each kind of fish is mostly fixed; you can consult an interactive map like this one [mapgenie.io] to learn where to find the fish you are searching for.

The particularities lie in its Lovecraftian horror setting, which manifests through more than the story arcs:
* By design, your character is highly discouraged from staying out during the night because they have a sanity metre (called “panic” in the game). When the panic is high, you will see and experience all sorts of strange things: chromatic aberrations, optic illusions, fish infection, and mostly horribly, sea monsters, which will pursue and attack you. (Luckily, sea monster attack can be turned off in the passive mode.)
* Each kind of fish has one of two eldritch variants (called “aberrations” in the game); these variants appear with a small probability each time you fish.

Summary: A unique kind of fishing game: cosy and smoothing during the daytime, cosmic horror and stressful at night. It takes around 10 hours to complete the main quests, and double the amount to 100%. I recommend it cautiously. If you are not daunted by the price, the Complete Edition offers the best experience. Goodies: + Well-polished and arguably feature-complete after more than one year's updates and two major DLCs. + The different mechanics are all easy to pick up. + Top-notch art and sound design and soundtrack. + Amazing Lovecraftian atmosphere. + Passive mode and other accessibility options. + An captivating open world divided into 7 beautiful regions, each with a vastly distinct environment and types of fish (more than 200 kinds in the game!). + Very satisfying boat driving and water physics. Downsides: - Not much evolution in terms of gameplay or plots; you basically repeat the same kind of mini-games / fetch quests / farming throughout the whole game. - The upgrades of equipment are fairly incremental and utterly underwhelming. - For a game with so many collectibles, there is no in-game tracking system; one has to rely on online guides or maps. - Extremely fragmentary lore. - Flat NPC design: insipid character arcs which rarely intertwine (NPCs rarely have reactions to the events outside their quests). - Only possible to fast travel to the centre of the map. Even with the full-upgraded ship, it is a slog to travel between regions again and again, especially at night when visibility is highly reduced. - No manual save. - In the late game, you will have tons of money but almost nothing to buy. This is exacerbated in the second DLC, where craftable equipments require raw materials that you cannot buy directly (only obtainable via dredging or farming). - - - Particularly highly priced, especially the two DLCs with a debatably small amount of content and boring story; the complete edition costs twice as much as most indie games. More details follow; you are also highly encouraged to visit [url=https://www.youtube.com/@blacksaltgames/videos] the devs' Youtube channel [/url], which has a dozen of one-minute-long videos showcasing various mechanics (e.g. fishing, inventory, time management) and major in-game regions. Gameplay structure: * A playthrough consists of finishing a set of main quests, which guide you to each main area of the open world. The quests (both main and side ones) are mostly independent and can be completed out of order. They are mainly fetch quests: fetch/deliver me these fish or those objects from/to point X. * Fishing (by rod) and dredging are mainly based on several kinds of QTE mini-games; the principle is more or less the same: push the button when the moving dots are in the indicated zone to accelerate fishing. * Throughout the game, you drive a fish boat. Fish, material, trinkets, equipment, etc, all have a fixed form and occupy a certain number of slots; you need to fit them into the storage of your boat like playing Tetris. * Money and material earned from quests or selling fish are necessary for upgrading your boat (more space to hold more goods or larger equipment, better equipment for more types of fish, higher cruising speed, etc). * Fishing/dredging + selling + upgrading form the main gameplay loop. More about the fishing elements: * There is a day-night cycle; time advances when fishing, driving, or installing equipment. Some fish only spawn during the night. * There are also passive ways of fishing by using trawl nets and crab pots. * Fishing spots appear as bubbling water; each spot contains one kind of fish, which can be guessed from the silhouettes under the bubble. The spyglass allows determining the kind of fish in a bubble from far away, saving you the trouble of approaching. * The number of available fish in a spot is limited; once depleted, it takes some time for the spot to respawn. * The position of all the spots for each kind of fish is mostly fixed; you can consult an [url=https://mapgenie.io/dredge/maps/world] interactive map like this one [/url] to learn where to find the fish you are searching for. The particularities lie in its Lovecraftian horror setting, which manifests through more than the story arcs: * By design, your character is highly discouraged from staying out during the night because they have a sanity metre (called “panic” in the game). When the panic is high, you will see and experience all sorts of strange things: chromatic aberrations, optic illusions, fish infection, and mostly horribly, sea monsters, which will pursue and attack you. (Luckily, sea monster attack can be turned off in the passive mode.) * Each kind of fish has one of two eldritch variants (called “aberrations” in the game); these variants appear with a small probability each time you fish.