Dredge smashes internal expectations after topping 1 million sales

Black Salt Games' eldritch fishing adventure Dredge has sold over 1 million copies since launching in March 2023.

Dredge producer Nadia Thorne and 3D artist Mikey Bastiaens shared the milestone with Game Developer during an interview at PAX Australia, and revealed the title has performed well beyond its wildest expectations.

"We hoped to maybe sell 100,000 copies in our first year," said Thorne. "That would have been amazing. That was a top estimate when we were setting our expectations. We smashed through those targets."

Thorne said the New Zealand-based studio initially felt that selling 1 million copies in the space of a year was a "crazy" target, but said that Dredge actually surpassed 100,000 sales within 24 hours of launch, providing some indication as to what the future held.

"We actually had our launch party on a boat," says Bastiaens, "and we were just refreshing the [sales page] going 'oh my god, oh my god.'"

Those milestones have allowed Black Salt to continue supporting the project from a place of security, and the studio is now preparing to launch its first official expansion for Dredge in the form of The Pale Reach on November 16, 2023.

If you're curious how Black Salt crafted the wonderfully creepy world of Dredge, you can read our coverage of Bastiaens GCAP talk where he explains how the studio turned players' worst fears against them. Or plunge into our extensive interview with the dev team to learn what goes into making an unsettling seascape with hidden depths.

For a more technical look at one of the project's core mechanics, why not pore over this dev-authored deep dive into Dredge's spatial inventory system–penned by Black Salt programmer, writer and co-designer Joel Mason.