Dread Nautical is quite interesting, combining survival and turn-based strategy with a horror setting. It might feel a little bit overwhelming some times, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a lot of fun with it.

The combat is solid, the characters are interesting, and like the ocean the ship sails over floats over, the developers have ensured that their work has impressive depth.

A pleasant combination of multiple genres with a mysterious story and a turn-based core. RPG elements work well but the graphics are only ok. It would just need a little scarier atmosphere. [Issue#303]

Dread Nautical offers minimalistic graphics and gameplay. The core gameplay loop is too repetitive to be interesting beyond a few hours. Survivors, combat, and looting all needed to be fleshed out more to create more engaging systems. Dread Nautical is a cruise I won’t regret skipping.

Rather unspectacular tactical rpg with roguelike-elements and a rather unusual open sea setting.

All in all, Dread Nautical is a reasonably unremarkable game. It does well with the foundational ideas of the genres that it utilises and meets its objectives with a suitable story. However, it is more of a novelty than an advancement.

Dread Nautical is an example of how a great concept can turn into an equally brilliant disappointment. The game boils down to collecting items, searching for survivors, destroying a boss or a cluster of opponents, and repeating the same thing. Add to this a crooked camera, average graphics, poor balance of characters and ammunition, completely non-scary world where there is a collection of Necronomicon pages, but there is no place for the sticky horror of Lovecraft, and you get a mediocre product that you don't need to play.