In DREADMOOR, your catch can eat the other fish

The most expensive fish in your hold might eat the rest of your earnings. In DREADMOOR, predatory catches fetch good prices, and the creatures you bring aboard can devour one another. So there are two jobs when the line tightens. First, land whatever's pulling. Then find it a compartment where it won't help itself to the fish you were planning to sell.

Dream Dock's fishing adventure launched in Steam Early Access on 9 November. You're making a living in the Submerged Lands, a flooded stretch of the world where people trade what they can bring back by boat. The hold is where the trip gets interesting. A predator can be your best catch and the reason you bring back less than you expected. You get to decide how much room to give it before you cast again.

Leave room for teeth

The hold is divided into compartments, and you choose which catches share one. The dividers give you something more interesting to think about than the amount of empty space left on the boat. Putting a predator in with smaller fish can cost you part of the haul. If you've filled the hold with smaller catches, the next valuable fish gives you a good reason to look over the whole arrangement before you drop it in.

There's a lovely indignity to the way this works. You've chosen a spot, put a lure in the water and paid enough attention to the line to get a fish aboard. Your next job is to referee the fish. It makes sense in a world where creatures survive by eating whatever they can, and it gives the predators something to do after you've had your moment of triumph on deck. They still behave like animals with an interest in what's within reach.

That changes what a promising patch of water is worth. If there's plenty of room to separate the catch, a second cast is an easy proposition. When the hold is already busy, another predator has to earn its space. The trader's prices make the dangerous fish worth pursuing, and a mouthful of your other catch comes straight out of the proceeds. Our earlier feature on preparing the trawler for the journey home looks at the fuel and repairs that help you get there.

Give the line a little time

There's plenty to watch before the fish even reaches the deck. Dream Dock has you try different baits and respond to a fish's movements once it bites. The line can play out while you wait for an opening to reel in. It's an appropriately awkward way to meet the thing you'll be handling a moment later. From the first-person view, you're holding the rod and looking straight down at the water where all that resistance is coming from.

When you cast matters as much as where. Dream Dock's fishing diary describes rare species that turn up under particular conditions or at certain times. After dark, visibility drops and creatures grow more active. A fishing ground you already know in daylight gives you a sensible place to see what changes. You can return to the same water with a different bait or at a different hour, and the catch gives you a reason to pay attention to both.

There's a smaller hazard right at the pier. The first Early Access update lowered the chance of the fish thief appearing there to 80 per cent. It's a funny little number to find alongside the fixes for controller support and quest progression. Even the place where you'd expect to get your bearings has something with an eye on the fish. The pier and the hold both give the catch a life beyond the instant you land it.

Keep something for the workbench

What makes the sorting worth the trouble is that selling fish is only one way to use them. Dream Dock describes processing catches into materials for tools, bait and upgrades. Rare specimens can open up crafting options of their own. If you've been looking for a particular ingredient, keeping that catch whole matters for a different reason from getting the biggest possible payout. A successful trip can set up the next one by giving you something new to put on the hook.

The Sea Blight gives those ingredients a place in the world. The substance had uses in medicine and engineering before the collapse, and it now spreads through water and air and changes the creatures it reaches. Dream Dock describes some animal mutations settling into traits that help them survive. That history gives a strange-looking fish a purpose beyond its appearance. The same changes that make specimens useful to you have helped the wildlife live in the water you depend on.

One of the good things about a fishing story is the moment when somebody holds up the catch. Here, the thing dangling from the landing gripper can have a spray of bony spines and an eye you can pick out from across the deck. In DREADMOOR, there's still a decision to make after you've had a good look. Lower it into a compartment of its own and you can start thinking about the next cast.