In the roiling waters of the northern sea, a mysterious oil rig has appeared whose lights can be seen for miles in the darkness. The foreman is a bit jittery, clearly worried about the platform’s somewhat shoddy construction and his overbearing boss docking his pay for being behind schedule. When the drilling does begin, it’s not oil they strike, but something far more sinister that splinters the sea floor with an ominous red, volcanic glow. And the resident scientist and his corporate suit boss only seem to want to feed this supernatural terror, the safety of their fellow workers be damned.
To some, I’ve just described the plot of The Chinese Room’s recent walking horror, Still Wakes the Deep. But in a strange coincidence, Dredge is now following the same trajectory with its latest DLC, The Iron Rig – albeit with fewer left hooks throwing errant Coke cans to distract wandering nasties and more actual hooks reeling up yet more fresh horrors from the deep. This new chapter in Dredge’s faintly cursed archipelago finally puts the spotlight on the mysterious Ironhaven Corporation, whose CEO is a dead ringer for Wake’s weaselly boss Rennick, right down to his last-minute escape on the corporate helicopter. It’s all profits before people in this unfortunate corner of the ocean, though unlike Wake’s poor Caz, at least you can share in some of those benefits this time thanks to the plentiful supply of upgrade opportunities for your boat.
Over the course of three to four hours, The Iron Rig will see you revisit each of Dredge’s main island clusters, hunting for fresh fish in new micro-habitats created by pools of ungodly ooze that have sprung up from the fissures created by the rig’s drill. Each time one of these clearly very bad cracks opens up, the rig’s scientist will task you with collecting various samples to bring back to him for further analysis, but some of these aren’t easily won with your default set of equipment. Cue, then, a gentle and well-paced upgrade back and forth that will see you construct new buildings on the rig to unlock enhanced versions of your rods, nets and winches, as well as blueprints for new engine parts, bait types and other gadgets to help speed the process along.
