The video game Dredge is based on a fishing trip which has a "sinister undercurrent". Image / Black Salt Games
By Felix Walton of RNZ
A Christchurch-developed video game about fishing is making waves overseas.
But Dredge isn’t a relaxing day out on the water. This fishing trip has a “sinister undercurrent,” its developer says.
“The elevator pitch for Dredge is a ‘cosmic horror fishing adventure,’ it appears to be a cosy fishing simulator on the surface, but very quickly you realise there are other things going on,” said programmer and writer Joel Mason. “The spookiness just feels right, because the ocean is kind of terrifying and unknowable.”
A week after its release, Black Salt Games’ first project was already a massive success. With 95 percent positive reviews on digital storefront Steam, and a comfortable spot within several other platforms’ top sellers lists, Dredge far surpassed the expectations of its four-person development team.
Mason, along with studio manager Nadia Thorne, lead artist Alex Ritchie and 3D animator Michael Bastiaens, took a risk when they left the safety of a large studio to begin their passion project two years ago.
“The whole idea was just to see if we can actually make a game that gets out there and is played by a few people,” Bastiaens said. “To see it go as crazy as it has, it’s been pretty awesome.”
The team thought a fishing game with a horror atmosphere would be too niche to succeed.
“I would’ve been happy if there were just a couple of people who said they loved it, if we just connected to a few people,” Ritchie said.
Instead, Dredge’s unique premise hooked gamers around the world.
“The reception and the response has blown all of our expectations and even our dreams out of the water,” Mason said. “We got some great reviews, which we’re really stoked about, we feel pretty great.”
Mason said game development was a risky business, and the decision to build a game from scratch was not made lightly.
“There’s a lot of luck involved, there was always that worry, but it felt right for us to do this, to focus on a game that’s just us.”
Video games are often developed by large teams with dozens of staff, but Black Salt Games said their small size had unique benefits. “We get to move pretty quickly, like if we want to change direction or try something new,” Ritchie said.
“Another benefit is that there’s less heads talking in a room at any given time, so we can make design decisions a lot quicker,” Bastiaens said.
Mason said it was not easy splitting an entire project between just four people. “The challenge is how much we can achieve with the hours we have in the day,” he said.
“We try to be really careful about keeping the scope of the game manageable, not making it into a 10 year project.”
Nadia Thorne said keeping the team’s expectations in check was vital for the project to succeed.
“I think being in the industry for a while meant we were really realistic about what was likely achievable with the first title from our own studio,” she said. “So we went in armed with that knowledge and everything we did was to just try and increase the chances of Dredge being a success.”
A week after its release Dredge had surpassed the expectations of its Black Salt Games’ development team.
After a whirlwind week, the team at Black Salt Games was thinking about the future. Should they work on further updates to Dredge? A sequel? Or should they start something entirely new?
Thorne said their first order of business would be to address any bugs, glitches and flaws discovered by Dredge’s unexpectedly large playerbase.
“Immediately it’s about making sure Dredge is fully supported and our players feel how appreciative we are for their response,” she said.
Bastiaens said next week’s plan was to do a breakdown. “Alright, here’s how things are going, do we want to keep going with Dredge, do we want to move onto the next project? We’ve got a couple of ideas of where we could take things, whether it’s more Dredge or something else entirely.”
Following two years of intensive work on Dredge’s oceans, the team felt inclined to change course. “I think Alex is kind of done with fish for a while,” Bastiaens said. “Yeah, [he drew] 128 fish illustrations,” Mason said.
“We got there in the end,” Ritchie said.