Dredge

Dredge is an atmospheric adventure with fishing-simulation elements from the New Zealand studio Black Salt Games, in which the player sails a small boat across fog-shrouded waters, fishing to pay off debts and uncover the mystery of a vanished fisherman in a remote harbor town. As dusk falls, however, the waters change, and unsettling phenomena and creatures appear in the dark, while the player also has to contend with a fatigue mechanic that, if they stay out at sea too long, begins to distort their perception of the surrounding world and conjure hallucinations that even affect the layout of the map. The player gradually upgrades their boat with new tools and components found at sea, allowing them to venture into more distant and dangerous areas of the map.

On Xbox Series X|S the game runs smoothly and at a crisp resolution, which stands out especially on the dark water surfaces and in dense fog, where the game relies on slowly building atmosphere rather than direct action. A melancholic, faintly unsettling musical score and a stark, illustrative visual style with striking silhouettes support a narrative inspired by Lovecraftian horror and sea legends about things best left in the depths.

Dredge was released in 2023 and was very well received by critics for its inventive combination of a relaxing fishing loop with gradually escalating tension and horror elements, a combination not many games had attempted at this scale before it. The game is now often cited as a textbook example of how genre elements from seemingly incompatible styles can be woven into a single coherent, atmospheric whole, and it's one of the beloved smaller titles in the Game Pass catalog for players with weaker nerves as well as for those looking for a quieter kind of horror built more on oppressive atmosphere and uncertainty about what lurks beneath the surface than on direct scares and cheap jump-scares.

Why play it: For players who want a quieter horror built on oppressive atmosphere and uncertainty rather than jump-scares, this blend of relaxing fishing and escalating tension is an ideal choice.