Sources

Primary (developer)

• Joel Mason — "Deep Dive: The surprising depth of spatial inventories in Dredge", Game Developer, 2022-03-02. The definitive Spatial Inventory source: grid anatomy, inventory-as-health, quest-item rules, UX pitfalls, Tarkov contrast.

• Chris Kerr — "Trawling in the deep: How Black Salt Games made... Dredge", Game Developer, 2023-04-27. Postmortem interview: fuel→time decision, wave physics, four-corner map planning, harpoon cut, minigame pillars, scope discipline.

• Black Salt Games — launch team interview, blacksaltgames.com, 2023. Tutorial hindsight, camera-angle change.

• Boiling Steam — BitSummit 2023 interview (Nadia Thorne, Mikey Bastiaens): fuel-mechanic player requests vs playtest data, studio origins.

• Boiling Steam — TGS 2023 interview (Joel Mason, Alex Ritchie): art influences (Disco Elysium, Dishonored), cozy-horror framing.

Data references

• dredge.wiki.gg — Panic and Fish/Aberrations pages: panic triggers/effects, freshness stages (12h/level), trophy +25%, night +3% aberration chance, 84/151 aberration count, trawl-net freshness freeze. Panic · Fish · Aberrations

• StrategyWiki — DREDGE/Fish: infected fish at 35% value, infection spread rules.

• Steam guide — "Aberrant Chance + Other Stats" (datamined values): Atrophy condition values, rod aberration bonuses.

Reception & business

• GamesHub / Game Developer (PAX Aus 2023): 1M+ copies sold by late 2023; 100k first-year target hit in 24 hours.

• OpenCritic — The Iron Rig reviews: endgame-revival praise alongside repetition criticism — evidence for Late-game Problems & Fixes.

• Wikipedia — Dredge: release dates, platforms, team roles, Team17.

Caveat

Wiki-sourced numbers (multipliers, percentages) are community-datamined and may drift across patches; dev-interview claims are as-stated by the team in 2022–2023.