Dreadmoor: fishing, when whatever bites the line also wants to eat you

The fish eat each other in the hold.

That detail told me what kind of game I was dealing with. In Dreadmoor, you do not fill a catch inventory the way you put away groceries. You sort, you separate, you keep watch. Leave a voracious creature next to your best catch and you sail home with one fish fewer and one more problem.

The Dredge comparison comes within a minute, and it is earned: a boat, a sea that hides things, merchants who buy what you haul up, and an atmosphere sliding slowly into horror. But Dreadmoor is played in first person, and that changes everything. You do not watch your trawler from above, you are at the wheel, and when something moves in the dark water ahead of the spotlight, you are the first one concerned.

A world drowned by its own fault

The setting is a world flooded by a man-made catastrophe. The coasts have sunk, villages still stand on what is left of the land, and between them there is water. You fish to trade, you search abandoned buildings, caves and wrecks for scrap and forgotten blueprints, and you craft what you need to survive: specialised bait, reinforced harpoons, medicine.

The best system in the game is the dry dock. The trawler improves part by part: engine, propeller, hull, a fuel can rack, a spotlight, an afterburner to flee when things go wrong. Each upgrade opens an area you did not dare approach, and that is exactly the loop this kind of game needs.

And the market rule is as cruel as it should be: the more dangerous the catch, the better it sells. The game keeps pushing you towards whatever might kill you.

Combat, the weak spot

Mutant creatures fight in real time, at sea and on land, and that is where Dreadmoor shows its Early Access limits. Fights lack precision and readability, especially on dry land, where the game loses part of the tension it builds so well on the water. You want to stay aboard.

The rest holds up, and players are showing up: more than 3,800 online on launch day, 83% positive across the first 265 reviews. A first update already landed the same day, with better PlayStation controller support and new fish models. At 18.44 euros, it is a great pick for anyone who wore Dredge out.

Hauled up something truly horrible? Monster fishing photos are welcome on the InsertCoins Discord.