Dread Nautical Review ( Nintendo Switch )

Game: Dread Nautical
Genre: Role playing| Strategy
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, Console and Mobile)
Publishers | Developers: Zen Studios
Age Rating: EU 7 | US E 10+ | AUS PG
Price: USD $19.99 | AUD $29.99 | CAD $ 26.45| UK £17.99|EU €19,99
Release Date: 29th April 2020

Review code used, with many thanks to Zen Studios

Dread Nautical is a horror-themed, tactical turn-based RPG with rogue-lite elements by Zen Studios and released across Consoles and the Epic Games store for PC.

A Trip On The Nightmare Cruise

Upon starting Dread Nautical you’re treated to a brief cinematic opening where you get to watch what starts out as a normal holiday on the cruise liner Hope turn into a nightmare for those onboard. You witness some strange occurrences where grotesque monstrosities, the Thrall, from another dimension, show up. They overwhelm the cruise liner killing nearly everyone on board.

While this is happening you’re listening to an ominous voice that reveals you’ve been chosen for some kind of dark purpose and you’ve been transported into the realm of darkness, despair and dread…..that is Dread Nautical.

Not the sort of relaxing holiday cruise you where expecting.

Choose Your Difficulty

You are following the tale of one of four characters as they wake up in the bilge of the cruise ship. Since most of the other passengers and crew have mysteriously transformed into monsters or been killed you’re pretty much on your own until you can find help by seeking out other survivors and finding a way off the ship.

You can chose one of three difficulty settings when playing Dread Nautical, as the game has rouge-like elements you would expect that when you die you have to restart the game from the beginning. However due to the three difficultly settings it’s only in the hardest setting that happens. On the normal difficulty setting if you die time is reset back to the start of the day and all your gear is still in your inventory.

Gather Resources And More

You get to choose from one of four characters, each with their own different levels of HP and Action Points. We have Fargo, a private eye, VI a nerdy gamer, Hatano a former Yakuza enforcer and Miraje a disco singer. No mater who you pick your task is the same, hunt down survivors and convince them to join you on your expedition through the 20 decks to unlock the mystery of the Hope.

During your journey around the cruise liner you will gather three resources, food, scraps and runes. Of course you encounter monsters and finally at the end of each day sound the fog horn from the ships bridge.

The resources you gather all come in useful, food obviously keeps your character fed, without eating your character has less health and are venerable. Scraps are used for everything, from creating a crafting bench, repairing your breakable weapons, making armour and crafting camp beds for the other survivors to sleep on. And runes are used to level up your teams stats, armour, health and their skill with melee weapons or guns.

Tactical Combat And Finding Others

Movement in Dread Nautical is grid-based and if you move into the field of view or go near enemies, combat is initiated. During combat, you use your action points to move or attack, in typical turn based combat format. Some monsters don’t spot you right away, letting you blindside them in a surprise attack to receive a damage bonus. The combat is a fairly standard affair for a tactical strategy game.

With breakable weapons and a limited inventory space you’ll find yourself having to make choices on what items are worth keeping and carrying around with you. Since the weapons are breakable there is always the question of do you repair it or save the scrap you would have used in repairing your equipment to upgrade your crafting bench.

Even repairing or upgrading items have choices involved with a risk – reward system, such as do you use more scrap for a higher chance of repairing an item successfully or save some scraps by making a lower quality item. Or do you risk both the item and the scrap if the crafting fails completely. All these mechanics add a management layer to the game making it a balancing act as you decide what to keep in your inventory and also keep an eye on your team and their needs, after all they must be fed. And since your weapons break it’s sometimes best to try and avoid combat at times.

Finding your two team members to join you on your exploration of the ship’s decks isn’t just a case of finding them, talking to them and hey presto they join your team. It can be quite a drawn out system for recruiting new team members since no one on board the ship trusts anyone else. Those that you do meet you will have to slowly gain their trust before they will join you. Do this by choosing the right dialogue to make them trust/like you and you may have to return to them a few times before they do decide to join.

Visuals And Controls

As you can see the visuals in Dread Nautical have a simple blocky, cartoonish, aesthetics, it’s okay but I really don’t like the animation for the characters as they talk to you, their arms and hands are blocks with no details on them. Throughout the ships decks the visuals are a lot better and show more detail in the surroundings.

Dread Nauticalis controlled using the Joycons and it works fine. There can be a little problem with the cursor jumping about when you try to highlight an object to investigate it, this can get annoying quickly. There are long load times between the end of each day and the start of the next, maybe an update would help with this problem.

Dread Nauticalis voice acted throughout and this is done well, the music and effects are fine and fit in with the horror theme of the game.

Conclusion

Dread Nautical has a Lovecraftian horror theme, though it’s subtle it’s there. There certainly wasn’t anything in the game that I found to be scary as such, maybe a little bit more horror added to it would help in this area.

The core gameplay goes round in a loop, start the day, roam the decks, find resources, and try to survive. After a few runs I found this got boring pretty quickly, there isn’t much variety in the style of the decks on the ship and after a while they all feel much the same.