At the Future Games Show Summer Showcase, as part of Summer Games Fest 2026. Developer Frogwares showed off a new trailer for their Eldritch survival horror, The Sinking City 2, and it’s coming sooner than you think. The Sinking City 2 will launch on August 18, 2026, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Alongside this new trailer and release date announcement, Frogwares decided to surprise fans with a 1 hour demo drop. It’s available right now on Steam. I recently got hands-on with The Sinking City 2, and I encourage you to try it out for yourself with this public demo.
The demo covers the opening hour of the full game and offers an early look at Frogwares’ take on survival horror. It also provides the first opportunity to properly meet the new protagonist, occult adventurer Calvin Rafferty, and to begin uncovering the reasons behind his tragic and arduous journey into the flooded, Eldritch monster-infested city of Arkham.
Although I haven’t had time to sit down and write a full preview of what I got to play, which is different from the Steam demo. What I can say is that I was really impressed with what I got to play. It gave me those classic Resident Evil vibes that many of the best survival horror games share. Leaving me excited to play the full game when it releases on August 18, 2026.
The Sinking City 2 has been in development at Frogwares since January 2023, with the majority of our 90+ person team based in Ukraine. The constant hurdles and hardships caused by Russia’s invasion brought constant uncertainty and shifting timelines throughout production. The announcement of a release date marks a significant milestone, allowing the team to finally see the game in full, assess the remaining work needed to complete it, and prepare it for launch as a self-published title.
Sergiy Oganesyan, Head of Publishing at Frogwares, shared a very candid statement regarding the challenges and realities the development team has faced while making The Sinking City 2. Here’s what he said:
Making games is already chaotic and unpredictable, so having a war going on at the same time adds a layer of immense chaos. We were forced to constantly adapt and change our plans. So many times we had to rethink and adjust how we were going to get things done. And often just as we’d finally adapted and got into the new flow of things, something else would be waiting around the corner to throw us into disarray. Rinse and repeat.
We went through entire winters where heat and power were regularly cut off throughout the day because our infrastructure was being intentionally targeted. We had days where someone would be part of the team, and then the next day we’d hear they had been called up to serve and needed to start handing over their work to the rest of us. You’d be in a meeting one minute discussing some trivial design question, and the next, half of us would be saying, “Hold on, the air raid sirens just went off.” We’ve had people disappear for days because, overnight, their home or apartment building was hit directly or indirectly, damaging their homes.
Even during the week we finally picked a release date internally as a team, our feelings of joy and relief were quickly dampened when, that very Sunday, cities across the country came under some of the worst attacks since the start of the war. It felt like some vindictive force reminding us not to celebrate too much because everything could still change in an instant.
But despite all this, we’re keeping our heads up. We’re beyond proud and in awe of how we’ve come together through all of this, and we’re happy to have finally brought the game to a point where we can see its release on the horizon.
I can only congratulate the team on even being able to develop a game under those conditions and wish them all the best with the upcoming launch. I really hope that The Sinking City 2 can deliver on the promising earlier signs I saw in my hands-on time with the game.
The Sinking City 2, will launch on August 18, 2026, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
