Dreadmoor is a fishing horror game set in a world flooded by a terrible catastrophe, and it’s just concluded its latest playtest ahead of an upcoming Early Access release. I took a dilapidated trawler for a cruise through its waterlogged settlements and cast a few lines to see what kind of aquatic mutants took the bait.
There’s Something Fishy Going on Here
First things first: developers Dream Dock courted controversy and actively invited comparisons to another fishing horror game when they released Dreadmoor’s debut gameplay trailer without any gameplay in it in April 2025. Gamers were also quick to point out striking similarities to Dredge, the award-winning Lovecraftian fishing title from Black Salt Games; a resemblance Dream Dock played up in press releases and interviews.
However, Dreadmoor is not related to Dredge, and to Dream Dock’s credit the latest playtest highlights how different the games are, even as some similarities still exist. Dreadmoor is a first-person game, which affords the world a tactile feel as creaky boardwalks must be navigated and resources crafted by hand.
This latter point is one mechanic that’s handled in a couple of different ways, but the best one involves placing the relevant components for something (like a new fishing lure) onto the in-game workbench. These then transform into the given item, the same as if you just click on a handy ‘craft now’ prompt, but it’s an extra immersive step that shows Dream Dock is putting a little extra thought into something.
The same is true for the fishing mechanic, which is pivotal to the world of Dreadmoor. Fish get mashed up into boat fuel, can be sold as-is to traders, and sometimes provide extra supplies (such as chromatic scales) that in turn go into crafting or upgrading items. Fishing spots are highlighted by little fish head icons and wheeling gulls, and pulling up to one in the trawler shows the type of fish that can be found there.
Fishing itself is straightforward and a lot of fun: after casting a line into the rippling water and getting a bite, the fish then needs to be reeled in as you wrestle with it. If it moves left, pull right, and vice versa, until its energy runs out. Then, you can reel it in until it’s close enough to grab. However, their energy builds back up surprisingly quickly, and attempting to pull it in as it fights back risks snapping the line.
Out of the three fish species found in the latest playtest (a swampy lagoon) two are caught simply by waiting for a bite while the third requires the line to be dragged through the water to entice it. All three fight back in the same way, though, and all three had the same energy drain and recharge, which ends up making fishing feel repetitive rather than alive. Night time brings new, stranger species to fishing spots but the mechanic remains the same throughout.
Plus, Dreadmoor has a pace that could charitably be called sedate; I know real-life fishing can take a while, but I don’t really want the same level of waiting in a video game. The same holds true for the game’s grapple gun. This can be shot at floating debris (and bugs, another resource) to then reel into the boat. Granted, this gun can be upgraded but the default reel speed is so leisurely it borders on painful.
Land Ahoy
The trawler your named protagonist (Malcolm) captains is also slow-and-steady, but this gets an upgraded, faster engine before leaving the lagoon. Upgrading the boat is perhaps the one aspect of Dreadmoor I really admire, as it requires pulling into a dry dock (boathouse), then lifting up to clean, repair and upgrade. Barnacles can be blasted off the hull, and things like armoured plates can be added as defence. This all could have been done via in-game menus, so the commitment to creating a tactical experience is appreciated.
Malcolm isn’t stuck in his boat, though. Certain islands and buildings have normal docks the trawler can be attached to, to allow exploration. This is limited in the starting lagoon to a few places, which is a shame because the game’s environmental storytelling is one of its undoubted strengths. Everything looks wet and like it stinks; cabins and gangways have coral growths and pulsing polyps, and there are landmarks like shipwrecks and a big yawning skull from an aquatic leviathan, its jaws now home to weird glowing eggs. I hope the full game and later areas encourage and allow more land-based gameplay.
The storytelling extends to the world itself, as places have delightfully baroque names like The Throat and The Slough. Hidden notes tell of people who lost gambling bets trying to escape the place, or how “the Depths have been calling me for a long time.” NPCs tend to talk in a similar ‘love the sound of their own voice’ style, but the writing for them is also weirdly antagonistic, so this goes a long way to building their characters up as people who really can’t be bothered with social graces anymore. As to be expected, given that the majority of society is apparently dead or mutated (as evidenced by the deformed trader, who has a fish growing from his back).
A Peaceful but Problematic Apocalypse
Dreadmoor is, at least in its current state, a fishing horror game surprisingly light on horror. There are a couple of scripted monster attacks, but otherwise it’s hard to feel like the world is out to get you. There is a strong emphasis early on about how the night is dangerous, that places need to be barricaded, and that going out on the water when it’s dark is a terrible idea, but there’s almost no proof to any of this.
For example, I purposefully sailed around all night multiple times and only twice saw a monstrous tentacle pop out of the water. The first time I did get a momentary spike of panic from it but then…nothing happened. I kept sailing around at a leisurely pace and never saw it again, both times.
Maybe this will change as more areas open up, but for a game with ‘dread’ in its name there’s none of it right now. There’s also a bit more jank than I expected, given that Dream Dock has run several playtests already (eg. models clip through each other, button prompts occasionally fail to register).
The overall narrative is also a little confusing; Malcolm has either a dream or flashback (text only) concerning a woman and a child, then wakes up alone. There’s a disconnect between what you’re reading and what’s happening, with no apparent sense of urgency to finding Malcolm’s wife and kid. Malcolm is also strangely passive when it comes to other characters telling him what to do, which leads to a linear feel despite the wide open space.
It doesn’t help that characters aren’t voiced (except for a few stock lines during fishing sections), but instead offer a series of grunts, moans, groans and sighs during conversation, that is really odd and does absolutely nothing for immersion.
Still, Dreadmoor is sailing into Early Access on PC via Steam later this year, so it’s reasonable to expect a lot of issues to get ironed out. Crucially, what’s here already is interesting and overall fun to play. Whether or not Dream Dock fully jettison their inspiration’s design choices and fully embrace what currently makes Dreadmoor distinctive (the setting and extra level of thought given to performing in-game tasks) remains to be seen.
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