Frogwares’ The Sinking City was rough around the edges, but it shone with a genuine appreciation for its Lovecraftian lore, despite a cosmic horror-style litigation fracas which saw the developer fighting their publisher over control of the game. The Sinking City 2, due to release later this year, is free of these legal travails, though as a game developed by a Ukranian team in the midst of Russia’s invasion, real-world politics have once again provided a backdrop for eldritch horror.

That said, I’ve played a preview build of The Sinking City 2, and it feels like a standalone effort that reimagines the strengths of its forebear. We’ve still got the atmosphere of a flooded Massachusetts town under siege by forces beyond the veil, but instead of a bloated open world structure, this sequel trims the fat for the narrow corridors and timed thrills of survival horror.

Aside from the original Alone in the Dark and Eternal Darkness, it’s hard to pinpoint a game in the Resident Evil/Silent Hill formula that feels directly related to Cthulhu and his ilk. The Sinking City 2 aims to change this. Protagonist Calvin manages limited ammunition, locates locked doors and puzzles, finds the keys and items he needs to bypass these obstacles, and dodges plenty of shambling and skittering enemies along the way.

Interspersed amidst this terror are familiar Safe Rooms, all of which are decorated with signs of the apartment that Calvin shared with his lover Faye, who now lies in a coma and needs you to save her. And yes, a gramophone in these locations plays the hauntingly calm music that survival horror fans have come to expect when saving their games.

I saw two areas in my preview that gave me further reminders of the genre’s touchstones – the decayed streets of Arkham (which are like a 1920s Raccoon City, but with flood waters everywhere) and the interior of the Akeley Memorial Hospital (which brought to mind memories of the Raccoon City Police Department). Throughout both, Calvin was haunted by the Slither – worms that burrow into deceased bodies and reanimate them a la zombies, but more Lovecraftian – and the Stygian, hopping spider-things that were in the first Sinking City, but are more troublesome here thanks to the lack of ammo.

Clearly, Frogwares have studied from the greats and tweaked their approach accordingly. As someone who appreciated the recent Resident Evil Requiem and Silent Hill f, I found much to enjoy in The Sinking City 2, though Calvin is certainly less memorable from the onset than Leon Kennedy, Grace Ashford, or Hinako Shimizu. That said, his travails are a little more cerebral.

The first Sinking City, as well as Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes games, have all featured investigations where the lead character analyses crime scenes and puts pieces of evidence together, formulating a representation of how someone died in their mind. (Batman: Arkham Origins and Knight did the same thing.) The Sinking City 2 swaps this mind palace for an investigation bulletin board that exists in the menu and lets Calvin form connections between various in-game documents.

At first, this just seems like a way of organising the notes scattered around Arkham (often scrawled by folks in the grips of eldritch breakdowns). Handy, but surely not necessary. But when you realise that you actually acquire a currency for character upgrades by connecting documents together, the process becomes more interesting. The organisational aspect also proves to be vital, as one of the puzzles that I ran into – which involved arranging the symbols on a monolith to match those of various deities in Lovecraft’s mythology – was enough of a brain-scratcher that I had to use a physical notebook to scribble down notes while referring to the investigation board’s hints.

This felt like I was a real private sleuth on the job. At its best moments, the first Sinking City provided instances of this sensation, but they were bogged with jank and watered down in an overworld that seemed a tad too large, letting the intimacy of a good mystery be swept away in the tides.

The Sinking City 2, with its new focus, seems set to avoid this misstep, delivering a combination of survival horror suspense with the puzzle solving found in traditional adventure games. Frogwares have certainly endured a lot to get this sequel to the finish line, and if the final product delivers in this manner, maybe we’ll finally have a good Cthulhu game that can stand up to the likes of what Pyramid Head and Nemesis have given genre enthusiasts.

Disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter for The Sinking City 2 in 2025. There have been a few builds released to certain Kickstarter backers, but this intended-for-press preview is the first time I’ve personally played the game.