Dokdo is an odd game that’s pretty fun if you can get into its slow pace and simple design.
The main point of Dokdo is to explore an ocean and upgrade your ship. You do this by fishing, battling, exploring and conquering new islands.
Fishing is the most straightforward task in the game since you park your boat near an island that you own and automatically catch fish.
To take over an island, you need to battle and sink the ships around it. There’s a counter that appears at the top of the screen indicating how many ships are guarding the island.
Combat is simple too. Once you’re within range of an enemy ship, you’ll automatically begin firing as fast as your cannon allows. You can upgrade your weapon at a friendly port if you find you’re losing a lot of fights.
There are a few reasons why you’d want to take over an enemy island. First, it gives you another port to heal at. Beyond this, you can also then fish at that island and there may be lower prices on certain goods like wood or rocks.
There are 28 different islands to gain access too, plus some hidden locations late in the game.
One thing that’s not great about Dokdo is the lack of direction it gives you. There’s no real rule book or goal, with everything being left up to the player to discover. To aide with this lack of direction, there is a small Reddit community that explains a lot of the game’s mechanics and concepts.
Overall, Dokdo is a decent resource management game where figuring out the game’s mechanics ended up being a large part of the experience.
In the end, I liked Dokdo due to its easy-going pace, its simple art style and the drive to want to keep upgrading my ship.