Overdue Reviews is an occasional series in which I pretend to be a videogame journalist. This week: testing the limits of Dredge.
There are lots of things to like about Dredge. One of my favourites is how it handles the boundary of the map.
Mild spoilers ahead.
I'd played through most of Dredge properly until I decided to test what happens if you try to go beyond the bounds of the world. There are five main clusters of islands in the base game, surrounded by apparently endless open water. But what could be beyond that? Obviously nothing (this isn't the real world) but how would the developers handle players who ventured too far? A warning message? An invisible wall? A hard reset?
Turns out, fairly predictably. I knew what was likely to happen, but I tried it anyway, just for the experience.
My boat was fully upgraded. I had the most powerful engines, all of the special abilities. I set off from the Marrows in the early evening and headed due south, reasoning that I would be in open water by morning and at least be able to see what was coming.
As the sun rose onto a clear day and the last of the islands were far behind me, I approached the dotted line on the map that borders the world of Dredge. A warning message suddenly appeared and for a moment I thought that would be it - nice try, there's nothing here, go home.
But then I saw the ridge of spines cutting through the water towards me. I swerved to avoid them, spinning the view around to check my progress. The creature, whatever it was, seemed briefly flummoxed by my manoeuvre, taking a path perpendicular to my own, leaving me clear.
I'd taken no damage and the edge of the world was behind me. Perhaps I could continue out here, exploring nothing and dodging the monsters. Maybe I'd even eventually grow bored and decide to head back to land, where I could regale the locals with tales of my terrifying adventures. They would look at me with awe and disbelief, unable to comprehend the horrors I had faced.
And then a massive godzilla-like creature burst of out the water with an ear-splitting roar and swallowed my boat whole. It actually made me jump. Serves me right, really.