Review – Dredge: The Iron Rig

Dredge is a fabulous indie cosmic horror fishing game that eases you in with a solid fishing mechanic and a few mutated catches. The story and gameplay are engrossing and had me hooked from start to finish, which is why I’m so glad that its latest and final DLC, The Iron Rig, is the best excuse to start a new save file.

Dredge: The Iron Rig is both a story and world expansion for the base game that manages to preserve the core experience to the point that you’ll have a better time with it if you restart the game instead of continuing on from a near-complete playthrough. The DLC’s focal point is a huge oil rig that’s visible from every part of the map, looming in the distance like some great metal giant just waiting to come to life and chase you across the seas. Mercifully, The Iron Rig doesn’t do that. It does something much more sinister.

Dredge: The Iron Rig (PC [Reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Black Salt Games
Publisher: Team 17
Released: August 15, 2024
MSRP: $11.99/£11.99

A new world beneath the surface

You can’t access The Iron Rig in Dredge until you’ve reached the base game’s third major location. This ensures you know what you’re doing and have most of the equipment you’ll need when you finally decide to visit the hulking metal structure. This is the DLC’s greatest strength, because it helps keep the base game’s story and progression intact. The way you slowly gain new technology and upgrades through the story helps you master them all, and The Iron Rig is all about increasing your power, so it wouldn’t do for it to break that progression right off the bat.

You will notice the impact of the DLC from the very first moment you set sail on a new save file, though. Strange crates now appear in specific locations all over the map. Of course, the game teaches you to dredge up anything and everything you can, so these crates quickly fill up your storage as you hold onto them for a rainy day. That rainy day is your arrival at the oil rig just after reaching Stellar Basin.

The crates you’ve collected are used to build and unlock parts of the rig, allowing you to meet and greet the odd new characters it introduces. They’re just as strange and haunted as the residents of every other location in the game, but each one seems to be trying to escape their past. They add a lot more flavor to a playthrough, and I had a great time working with them to unlock new features of the rig and use their services.

After a short while, the true nature of The Iron Rig is revealed. Once operational, the oil rig inadvertently causes a huge rift in the bedrock under the seas you thought you knew so well. This causes a thick black substance to bubble to the surface and forces new fish species to return to the ocean, having only previously appeared as fossils. It’s obvious Black Salt Games had a blast with these creatures because you’ve got ancient fish, crustaceans, and even things we don’t fully understand in 2024, like the Tully Monster.

As you might expect, you’ll pick up quests that revolve around these new species and that dark substance, but the base game’s undercurrent of cosmic horror only grows with this new development. You have no idea what’s going on, and the DLC’s events only worsen over time, adding to the overarching narrative of this cursed collection of islands.

The most important thing about the way The Iron Rig‘s story evolves over time is that it follows Dredge‘s natural progression. It takes you through each area of the game in the same order you follow in the base story, which felt like it let me see them all in a completely new light. The progression also plays into the equipment you need to use in these areas as they change over time. Despite having already completed an area, you’ll need to improve your equipment with strange new rods and gear if you want to return and advance The Iron Rig‘s story.

While some residents of previously visited locations will mention Ironhaven and the dark ooze covering their local waters, many others don’t. I found this a little stranger than is usual for Dredge, just because these are massive alterations to the environment, and I expected to see more mentions of it in dialogue. However, this is an odd game with odd characters who fit just as well in the world, whether they mention changes to their surroundings or not.

The Iron Rig‘s characters more than make up for this, though. They’re incredibly chatty and strange and toe the line between unnerving you and making you feel like a firm friend. They’re super unsettling and don’t feel like a part of any of Dredge‘s communities. This fits perfectly because they’re outsiders, so they shouldn’t be similar to any of the locals. Black Salt Games hit the nail on the head with them because they really are this cosmically haunted world’s definition of a rag-tag group of outsiders, all clearly hiding from their past or attempting to hide their intentions in the most remote location in the world. The problem for them is that location has just as many secrets as they do.

The Iron Rig gives you more reasons to fish and dredge up materials, but it can be a bit of a slog if you don’t utilize the new gadgets you can grab from the rig. Standard equipment like trawler nets and crab pots are altered to allow you to gather the thick black liquid rising up from the deep and collect the materials strewn throughout the ocean by crashed ships. You’ll also need a new set of rods to catch every new fish and crustacean the dark liquid brings with it because the infusions the rig provides protect your line from the unknown substance.

This speeds up progression through both the base game and DLC somewhat, but with the added seven hours or so The Iron Rig tacks onto the base game, it doesn’t feel any less meaty. I tried to play through the DLC’s story in tandem with the base game, and nothing ever felt like busywork. The initial story helps you grasp the basics, and The Iron Rig lets you stretch your wings, so to speak.

For all the new technology The Iron Rig adds and the renewed speed at which you can get it, Dredge‘s attention to detail may be its own downfall when it comes to the DLC. After acquiring upgrades for my engines that added new abilities but also massively increased my speed, I found that traversing the world actually became more difficult. I kept bumping into rocks that I never hit even when my boat was fully upgraded in the base game.

I want to stress that this only happened in a couple of areas, such as the Collector’s island and locations where there are many objects to dodge as you travel. It’s not a dealbreaker by any stretch, but it did frustrate me because I knew I shouldn’t be ramming these things, and the only difference is that The Iron Rig has given my boat more power than I can clearly handle.

I fell in love with Dredge all over again while playing The Iron Rig. It completes the game in a way I never thought I needed and makes it feel brand new. Every point that the base game made about humanity’s impact on the world and the unknown implications from…well, the unknown, is heightened by the DLC. It’s the perfect reason to replay, a fantastic excuse to stay in bed all weekend and play a cozy horror game, and a new way to make yourself wonder about what’s lurking out of sight the next time you look out at the vastness of the ocean.