Surprisingly, the excellent Noclip documentary about Dredge got me thinking about the game again. I played it almost immediately when it came out because I was very interested in the mash-up of cosmic horror and a fishing game. And it's a fine game! I played it for 16.7 hours according to Steam. But I didn't leave with a sense of "Damn, I wish I had more Dredge." And the documentary shines a light on why I felt that way.
By all objective metrics, Dredge was an absolute smash hit. This was the first game from a new studio based in New Zealand with only three permanent employees. They were hoping for 10,000 sales to ask for funding for their next game, but instead, they got one million copies sold in their first week. I love that for them!! But then the documentary talks about their influences on their game, and the insular tendencies of the video games industry writ large really reveal themselves. Their low-poly art style was purely based on economics, and they cribbed their art direction from the portraits in Disco Elysium (fair). They wanted to make an open world because they had all been playing Breath of the World. But the most revealing thing to me is that they didn't worry about the fishing part of their game for the longest time because they knew it would figure itself out eventually. And buddy, if your cosmic horror fishing game isn't about fishing, then what's it about?
This all contrasts sharply with Pacific Drive, the game I've been playing most recently. That game is very clearly about driving your station wagon in the Pacific Northwest and feeling creeped out by the general vibes. It's about caring for a vehicle that gives you so much in return, and how you must learn its quirks to stay alive. The car in Pacific Drive is more of a creature than many a horse in actual horsey video games. Every mechanic in the game reinforces these vibes. And you don't have to take my word for it; this is exactly what the developers say their intent was in interviews!