DREADMOOR First Look: I Expected Horror, Instead I Fed Mutant Fish to a Fuel Maggot
I finished DREADMOOR’s free demo expecting some sort of fishing horror game. What I actually got was a slow, strangely relaxing adventure about maintaining a miserable little boat, catching mutant fish, rummaging through floating rubbish and grinding seafood into paste so a giant larva can produce fuel.
I barely experienced any horror at all.
And weirdly, I think DREADMOOR is better understood that way.
The demo feels much closer to SnowRunner wandering drunk into Sea of Thieves, falling asleep somewhere near Far Harbor and waking up to discover marine biology has become illegal. It is slow, tactile and filthy, with almost every mundane job turned into an animation or minigame instead of another button that magically teleports resources into your inventory.
I’m still not sure whether I’d choose to play the full game over something else.
But I absolutely understand the appeal now.
Apparently DREADMOOR isn't the only game turning ordinary chores into an ecological nightmare. In Ambrosia Sky, you clean alien fungus while the local wildlife objects violently to your employment.
DREADMOOR is at its best when it makes ordinary work horribly complicated
The first thing I did was cut the controller camera sensitivity roughly in half because apparently the protagonist wakes up able to inspect both shoulders simultaneously.
Then I noticed the room was full of stuff.
I took all of it.
I don’t know why it was there or whether I actually needed any of it. My inner hoarder simply saw unattended objects after the apocalypse and assumed civilisation had officially moved to a finders-keepers economy.
That mentality fits DREADMOOR rather well because much of the demo is about doing small jobs yourself. You fish through an actual minigame. Floating objects are grabbed using your hook tool. Repairs involve interaction. Dry-dock upgrades play out through moving machinery rather than quietly changing a statistic somewhere behind the menu.
The dry dock especially reminded me of Pacific Drive. There is something satisfying about watching machinery physically work on your vehicle. Progress feels like something has actually happened.
But the boat itself is probably my favourite part.
It rattles, creaks and complains constantly. It reminds me of old cars where every noise initially sounds like the gearbox has finally achieved consciousness and chosen death, but eventually you learn which horrible sounds are normal.
Sailing around gave me the same sort of feeling I get from SnowRunner.
Nothing happens quickly.
You travel somewhere. You stop. You fish. You drag some rubbish aboard. Something needs fixing.
Somebody wants another favour. You realise you need something else and slowly chug away again.
I usually hate games wasting my time.
Here, the slowness feels like part of the point.
Then DREADMOOR made me refuel the boat by feeding a maggot
This world is wonderfully disgusting.
Early on I found a man engulfed by coral with what appeared to be an axe embedded in his forehead.
My character seemed completely unfazed.
Fair enough. Apparently this doesn't crack the local top ten.
The people I met weren't doing much better. One merchant appeared almost zombified, while the actual talking was being done by a fish attached to his shoulder.
I assume there is lore.
There had better be lore.
Then I heard about the Baron, apparently the leader of this dump, and immediately decided I wanted his job. If somebody has built an organised operation out here, I want to know what he controls. Trade? Fuel? Territory? Fish? Can I overthrow him? Can I become the local aquatic crime lord?
No.
Apparently my career prospects involve larvae.
To refuel the boat, I had to catch a mutant fish and grind it into disgusting paste so I could fatten a fuel larva.
I have refuelled an unreasonable number of vehicles in games.
Usually I find a petrol can.
Sometimes I find a pump.
DREADMOOR apparently decided that was lazy game design and inserted an entire food chain between me and the ignition.
Catch fish.
Grind fish.
Feed maggot.
Fuel boat.
This is completely ridiculous.
I love it.
It is also a perfect example of why the tactile approach works. DREADMOOR could simply turn fish into fuel through a crafting menu. Instead it makes you participate in the revolting little industrial process.
You aren't collecting generic resources. You are running the worst Shell station in human history.
The fishing is nice, but I don’t know whether I want thirty hours of it
The actual fishing immediately reminded me of Sea of Thieves.
Different fish can require different bait and tactics, and the minigame itself is surprisingly pleasant. I caught a snapper first.
Time to update the dating profile.
There is definitely something relaxing about sailing around, finding a fishing spot, casting and listening to your boat slowly dismantle itself acoustically beneath you.
I can see why people will love this.
I’m simply not sure whether I'm one of them.
The demo kept fishing interesting because I was still discovering everything around it. New places, strange characters, the boat systems, the larvae, the world.
Eventually those things become normal.
Then the fish have to carry more of the game.
That is where I still have questions. Different bait and tactics help, but the differences felt fairly minor during the demo. If the full game wants me doing this for dozens of hours, I want the fish, conditions and wider economy to keep changing what I’m actually thinking about.
Otherwise I’m just commuting to work with a fishing rod.
Had enough of mutant fish and fuel maggots? RetroSpace lets you mutate yourself, die, get cloned and potentially recover genetic material from your previous corpse.
The world looks horrifying, but I didn’t find the demo scary
This was the biggest surprise.
I barely encountered anything hostile.
Once, while fishing, a tentacle suddenly grabbed me.
And that was pretty much my entire horror career.
The atmosphere is excellent. DREADMOOR looks rotten. Fog hangs over the water, people are diseased, horrible biological nonsense is growing everywhere and half the population appears to be losing an argument with seafood.
But I never felt frightened.
The closest comparison I can make is Fallout 4: Far Harbor. Not mechanically, but in the way the atmosphere works. The world feels sick and uncomfortable without necessarily trying to terrify you.
And that is completely fair because DREADMOOR actually describes itself as an adventure, rather than selling itself primarily as horror.
After finishing the demo, that seems accurate.
If you want a horror fix, I wouldn't come here expecting one.
If the idea of slowly travelling around an unsettling flooded world, maintaining an old boat and catching horrible fish sounds relaxing, then DREADMOOR becomes much more interesting.
The demo is still rough around the edges
There are definitely bits that need work.
At one point the objective told me to sail west, while the marker sat north on my compass.
So I sailed west.
Because apparently I still trust instructions.
Dead end.
I did find fishing spots, which was useful except I didn't have a fishing rod yet.
A magnificent expedition.
There are also quite a few subtitle mistakes, and some dialogue audio sounds visibly stitched together. John the Fifth was particularly noticeable.
John also gave me an absurd amount of work almost immediately.
I already had fishing to do. I had fuel maggots to feed. My boat sounded medically unwell. A fish was running a shop from somebody's shoulder.
John looked at this situation and apparently concluded that what I needed was a full inbox.
He also kept calling me "boy."
If John the Fifth does that one more time, John the Sixth may be the man assigned to remove his prosthetic leg from somewhere the manufacturer definitely didn't envisage.
The gate repairs frustrated me for a different reason.
I actually like the repair loop. I just wish the game trusted me more.
Give me schematics. Show me the machine. Let me figure out how it works.
IRON NEST did this brilliantly. Understanding a system can become part of the reward. DREADMOOR already puts so much effort into making its machinery physical that simply handing over the solution feels like missing an opportunity.
Give me the horrible machine.
Let me break it myself.
I still don’t know whether I would buy DREADMOOR
That uncertainty survived the demo.
The art is fantastic. The atmosphere works. The boat has character. The weird biological economy is exactly the sort of thing I want games to surprise me with, and the refusal to reduce every mundane task to "hold E" gives DREADMOOR a strong identity.
But would I choose it over something else?
I honestly don't know.
There are plenty of other fish in the water.
Sorry.
That one was impossible to leave behind.
What I can see is myself playing DREADMOOR when I want something deliberately slow. Sail around for a while. Catch disgusting fish. Repair the boat. Feed the larvae. Listen to machinery complain.
I went into the demo expecting horror.
Instead I found something much stranger: a chill game about manual labour in an ecological nightmare.
And I may actually prefer that.
DREADMOOR didn't satisfy your appetite for horror? Fair enough. The fish were apparently too busy running the petrol station.
DREADMOOR Demo FAQ
Is DREADMOOR a horror game?
Not really, at least based on the demo. It has creepy creatures, fog and a diseased world, but it feels much more like a slow adventure game with horror atmosphere.
Is the DREADMOOR demo free?
Yes. The free demo is available on Steam.
What do you actually do in DREADMOOR?
You sail around in your trawler, fish, scavenge resources, repair and upgrade the boat, complete jobs and interact with some wonderfully disgusting biological machinery.
Is the fishing good?
The fishing minigame is enjoyable and relaxing, with different bait and tactics for different fish. The bigger question is whether it has enough variety to stay interesting across the full game.
Is DREADMOOR scary?
The demo wasn’t particularly scary. I encountered very few threats, so the tension came mostly from the atmosphere rather than actual horror encounters.
When does DREADMOOR release?
The full game is currently planned for Q4 2026 on PC.
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