I have played video games for the majority of my life in varying quantities depending on how busy I am with other pursuits. Upon entering college several years ago, I found it harder to keep up with the year’s releases just due to the level of academic and extracurricular obligations that I prioritized. Despite having less time to game overall, our month-long breaks from class are where I do a lot of catching up on some of the year’s more prominent releases. I typically focus on indie games just because I find the gameplay styles a little more varied and the completion times are low enough where I don’t have to worry about not finishing. Oddly enough two of my favorites of the year ended up being fairly similar in terms of gameplay. Dave the Diver and Dredge are two fishing indie games released in the year 2023.
While somewhat similar on the surface, I feel the two games offer a really interesting case study on how art direction and tone influence a game’s final product. Both revolve around fishing mechanics, both operate on a quest-based structure, both have risk v. reward elements for fishing at night, and both have a “catch them all” completion mechanic. Their execution of these elements is what separates the two. Dave the Diver is a beautifully pixel-art animated vibrant and comedic experience where you spend a large amount of time helping and forming bonds with the eccentric locals. In contrast, Dredge is a Lovecraftian influenced 3D cell shaded game with slightly more focus on exploration. Unlike Dave the Diver, Dredge’s NPCs are cold and anti-social characters who frequently lock themselves away from the player in service of the isolating madness the game instills in the user.
This difference in tone is particularly apparent in the night expeditions available in both releases. In Dave the Diver the player has the option of venturing into the sea at night in order to obtain exclusive fish or to complete specific missions. This differs from the daytime gameplay in that the fish become much more aggressive and the player further risks their health and valuable time. While there are more threats during the nighttime, the actual tone of gameplay does not shift very much. Dredge has a far more dramatic shift during the night. In Dredge the player is incentivized to journey out at night with the chance of catching rare fish or completing special quests, much like Dave the Diver. The key difference is the drastic tonal shift of Dredge. At night, Dredge becomes a survival game as the player must navigate the rocky landscape while being actively hunted by giant menacing sea creatures. Much like the Lovecraftian fiction that it takes influence from, the fisherman in Dredge begins to go mad after the sun sets which leads to untrustworthy environments where rocks and other hazards spontaneously appear in front of the player, hidden within the thick fog that surrounds us.
While there are obvious differences throughout, these nighttime journeys are what really separate the two games with one still being a mostly relaxing good times romp and the other drifting towards unsettling and genuinely scary moments. These two releases demonstrate how gameplay similarities are really not that important when trying to create a unique game. The more important aspect is how the tone and art direction of the game’s carve out a unique environment for this gameplay loop. While there are near infinite possibilities for new mechanics in video games, as developers cover more ground, I expect the tone and art style of games to be far more important for developing new experiences.
-Henry
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 
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