Steam Players Spoiled With Bloodborne-Like Fishing Sim You Shouldn't Sleep On

The mark of a good game is always a fishing minigame. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has a fishing minigame, as does Red Dead Redemption 2, and many more.

With that in mind, it’s no wonder so many games make it their full schtick, and quite successfully so, too. Dredge is a great example.

Like Dredge, Dreadmoor is a frightening fishing game that puts players at the helm of a dilapidated boat in a sunken civilisation.

The waters are rife with mutated monstrosities, and there’s a freaky fishman who’ll pay top dollar for them, so off you go out into the swamp to sling your hook.

It’s a simple premise, and one we’ve seen before, but Dreadmoor is so much more than a simple Dredge clone.

Fishing is more intensive for a start. You’ve got to really fight the fish you’re trying to catch until it tires itself out, and while most of my catches during my hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest were groupers and snappers, I spotted plenty of larger river monsters lurking beneath the water. They didn’t seem like the type of aquatic life that’d yield to a simple rod and hook.

In fact, one part of the demo presented me with quite the spectacle. An enormous fish was skewered by the jagged leg of a striding house. It looked like something out of old folklore and was also the residence of the bizarre fishman I mentioned earlier.

Digital Vortex Entertainment

You get a pointy tool of your own in the form of a hookshot, which you can use to pull in debris you find in the water for crafting later on.

Expeditions also live and die by the amount of fuel left in your boat. It can store enough for a lengthy trip, but if you don’t keep track of it, you’ll find yourself down the creek without a paddle. I mean it, there’s no paddle item in the game as far as I’m aware.

So while it’s easy and fair to compare Dreadmoor to Dredge, it has plenty of its own gimmicks to keep it afloat. It also looks gorgeous.

If you’ve ever wondered what Yharnam from Bloodborne would look like if it were flooded for a hundred years, this would probably be it.

My demo only took me through a small section of the swamp, but there’s a vast world to explore, with each area bringing its own nautical challenges and dangers.

It’s said that your exploration could be halted at a moment’s notice by an underwater threat, which you’ll have to fend off before you can get back to your precious fishing game.

Dreadmoor has well and truly got me on its hook, and I’m excited to play it again. It launches exclusively for PC via Steam later this year.

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