Dredge: The Pale Reach – Review

It’s official. Dredge finally has an expansion! We return to the seas for this Eldritch horror cosy sim with its recent update, The Pale Reach.

Since its launch, Dredge has received multiple free updates from the dev team. They already added such features as map markers to keep locations on tabs rather than in your memory, boat cosmetic customising, a camera mode to take some beautiful shots, and even a pacifist mode so you’re able to enjoy the game minus the threat of the sea (while still keeping the creepiness all there).

The Pale Reach has you exploring a new archipelago down in the southern part of the ocean, with a new mystery to unravel. The story portion itself doesn’t take too long (even being advertised as a 1-3 hour piece of content) which may not sound a lot, but of course, playtime will vary depending on the upgrades to your ship and due to the content being accessible from any point of the main story this will impact completion speed.

Naturally, with a new environment will come new gear to acquire in the form of fishing equipment for ice fishing among other little tools, then using this gear to find new species of standard and abhorrent variants to add to your Fish Pokédex-like. As the new archipelago is frozen, it was a stark contrast from the other locations found within the main game with bright whites and blues splashed across the landscape. Night time was made more treacherous for travel with the addition of frozen chunks strewn across the locale along with dodging the colourful hates that chase you down.

This DLC is a great little addition to the already fanatic game, I would have liked it to be a little longer, with maybe a few more puzzles to work out, however, I’m just happy that more content exists. The way the text reads on the store page is “the first official expansion” which to me implies more content is to come in the future and I truly hope that is the case.

A well-deserved 9/10, even if a little on the short side.