Ask any tabletop game fan for popular literary inspirations behind games, and you’re bound to hear H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos. There are tons of board games that adapt tales of eldritch horror. Yet, Lovecraftian adaptations don’t dominate video games the way they seep into board games. As such, Frogwares has set out to stake a claim on the cosmic horror genre in gaming. The Sinking City 2 pivots from its predecessor by taking a survival horror approach. The sequel tells the tale of a ritual gone awry in the sunken city of Arkham and a man battling denizens from the deep to bring back the woman he loves.
Game Name: The Sinking City 2
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Reviewed On: PlayStation 5
Developer: Frogwares
Publisher: Frogwares
Release Date: August 18th, 2026
Price: $49.99
The Lore Behind The Sinking City 2
Known for the Sherlock Holmes games, Frogwares was tapped to develop a Call of Cthulhu game in 2014. That project went to another developer, but not to be deterred, Frogwares pivoted to an open-world investigative Lovecraftian game instead: The Sinking City. The game received lukewarm reception. Not to be deterred once more, Frogwares returned to the drawing board for its sequel, trading in the open-world for a more focused survival horror approach. As such, it’s primarily a standalone title despite the sequel numbering. If at first you don’t succeed, try again, but this time as a survival horror.
And Frogwares is not a studio to be easily deterred by adversity. The developer worked on The Sinking City 2 in Ukraine between January 2023 and August 2026, against the backdrop of the Russian invasion. Booting up the game each time, players are greeted with a screen reminding them of this fact and thanking them for supporting the game.
A developer has every right to make an opening screen whatever it damn well pleases. But I’ll confess to finding it curious. Was it an apology for them not making the game they wanted? Would it have been better as a coda in the credits once players completed the game? I wondered. However, after finishing the game, I understand why it’s at the forefront. The war colors everything that happens in The Sinking City 2, a game literally about people trying to survive the unimaginable. What’s a more Lovecraftian reality than everyday folks bombarded by an unfeeling regime and its insatiable hunger?
Lovecraft Your Way
Starting up the game proper, The Sinking City 2 offers four combat difficulty options: sweet dreams (optional invulnerability and immortality), restless slumber (normal), hard night, and sleep demon. It also offers two investigation difficulty options: Breezy (important information highlighted, evidence icons have matching symbols, puzzles unchanged), Brainy (important information not highlighted, in the investigation space all evidence icons look the same, puzzles unchanged).
Not wanting to get mired in assembling clues, I opted for normal combat and breezy investigations. I’m here for the horror. But despite its Sherlock Holmes pedigree, Frogwares really honed in on survival horror. Whenever you collect a clue, you can go to a nifty board to draw lines connecting them. The investigative difficulty simply tells you which clues go together. I don’t imagine it would’ve been hard for me to assemble them myself, even if my choice did mean I got to focus more on the Lovecraftian horror gameplay and narrative.
Dreams and Dread
In its story, The Sinking City 2 owes just as much to film noir as Lovecraft. It begins circa 1929 with roguish couple Calvin and Faye stealing the Book of Dreaming. Their ritual goes awry, putting Faye in a kind of cosmic coma. Her body is present, but her soul lies elsewhere.
Calvin is a likable protagonist. In voicing him, Andrew Wheildon-Dennis highlights how scrappy and witty he is here. He has a Harrison Ford quality to him. He’s knowledgeable but constantly getting in over his head and rolling with it.
Meanwhile, Faye goes toe-to-toe with Calvin’s wit and charm. Yes, she may be in a coma for most of the story. But the game smartly makes her a driving presence in the narrative as she guides Calvin from beyond. Gemma Whelan brings range to Faye as she goes from devil-may-care to grappling with a devil that does in fact care.
The Sinking City 2 has a surprisingly strong narrative for a survival horror game as it focuses on the micro and the macro. The backdrop for Calvin and Faye’s escapades is the city of Arkham, Massachusetts. Lovecraft fans will immediately recognize it as the setting of many eldritch events. Though here, it’s partially underwater. A bizarre flood has affected the inland city, bringing with it a host of, well, parasites. As people evacuate, Calvin goes deeper into the city to find the occult means to revive Faye.
The Survival Horror Staples of The Sinking City 2
In terms of gameplay, The Sinking City 2 should immediately feel familiar to survival horror fans. Resident Evil fans in particular will notice how The Sinking City 2 draws inspiration from the long-running series. It even has safe rooms where players can save at phonographs, access their item box, and upgrade stats. Still, the game adds its own flavor. Every safe room resembles Calvin and Faye’s home. The couple even comments on this, as it appears that the ritual had this effect. The Sinking City 2 may not surpass the survival horror greats, but it often adds its own touch to the formula.
Another case in point: the enemies. The Slither, grotesque worm-like creatures, can animate dead bodies. Yes, they’re basically zombies. However, they have the unique aspect of glowing weak points. Shoot the weak points, and enemies crumble faster than if you just shoot them normally. After shooting one pulsating weak point, another grows back after a moment. This adds a bit of tension to regular enemy encounters.
Things That Go Clunk in the Night
Despite inventive enemy designs, combat is a tad clunky. I’ll admit, I didn’t play the first entry of The Sinking City. Apparently combat was particularly tedious in that, and I’d believe it’s improved here. But it’s still not as fluid as it could be. The reticle often moves too slowly to reliably hit fast-moving enemies. Speeding it up makes it unwieldy while trying to lock in on weak points.
The rhythm of combat feels off in general. For example, I typically found that unless an enemy fell over right next to me, by the time I walked over to their prone body to start the stomp animation, they had already started to stand up. By this point, it wasn’t clear if I was damaging them or not. Melee in general feels fairly weightless.
Allegedly, players can stomp on The Slither to kill them, preventing them from possessing hosts. It’s a cool idea in theory but doesn’t seem to make a difference since most encounters are scripted. Enter a room with a bunch of bodies, grab an item or solve the puzzle, and they all come to life. Maybe there are fewer if you stomp on them beforehand? Finding a difference between a body possessed by 37 worms versus 35 worms seems to be splitting hairs—or splitting worms, rather.
Thankfully, combat is mostly avoidable. You can simply spam the dodge button as you run through derelict locations. This strategy is typically more effective than shooting and stomping, since animations are drawn out and slow. Besides, other than when fighting humans who still have their knees, shooting enemies doesn’t slow them down.
Managing the Madness
All that said, Frogwares likely knows that combat isn’t its strong point and compensates accordingly. Once I entered the more labyrinthine locales, I got so wrapped up in navigating them that I didn’t mind running past everybody. Aside from its opening hour, The Sinking City 2 takes place in a variety of largescale puzzle-box locations that players must gradually unlock room-by-room to escape. Enemies are just another obstacle. Thank the eldritch gods, that dodge button is responsive.
Occasionally, however, The Sinking City 2 cordons you off into a boss battle or encounter against waves of enemies. Helpfully, it respawns ammo and healing items in these areas, oftentimes giving you just enough of what you need. As such, you shouldn’t have to worry about restarting these encounters. Instead, it becomes a game of guiding shambling behemoths or hordes of ghouls around an area while picking up what you can. This proves more enjoyable than running out of supplies and having to regroup. Paradoxically, I found most of these mandatory combat encounters satisfying. Bosses or hordes prove easier to engage with than stray enemies getting in your way. And these deliberate showdowns let you try out various weapons.
Like any survival horror game worth its rationed salt, The Sinking City 2 has a few different guns you can find. Players can loot drawers for raw materials to craft ammo or health. While nothing new for the genre, the game does employ the helpful mechanic of letting you know on the map when a room has been fully ransacked. It’ll change from red to blue. Standard survival horror stuff.
Brain Over Brawn
Again, The Sinking City 2 doesn’t set out to reinvent the survival horror wheel. It just puts its own spin on it. Frogwares may still have work to do in the combat department, but if there’s one thing it knows, it’s puzzles.
I found the puzzles in the game just the right amount of challenging while being surprisingly relevant to the story. It’s perhaps in this field where The Sinking City 2 gets a leg—or tentacle—up on Resident Evil. Rather than finding gems to insert into books to flush down a toilet to open an armoire or what have you, The Sinking City 2 creates fantastical obstacles that flesh out the world. Literally. A great example comes from a hospital section. Certain doors only open if Calvin presents the peeled face of the authorized party. It’s fittingly gross, puts literal faces to the names found in notes, and foreshadows an end-of-chapter reveal.
Not only do the mainline puzzles prove engaging, but The Sinking City 2 provides optional investigations too. I found these slightly more perplexing than the main puzzles, but well worth doing. In fact, the lore they impart is so engaging that I often didn’t realize they were side quests until after I finished them. As such, I ended up completing almost all of them. As rewards, they provide Dream Essence. These upgrade a cosmic mask Calvin has, a connection to Faye’s soul. Upgrading the mask grants Talents, offering perks like taking less damage or faster reloading.
The Ritual of The Sinking City 2 Works
If I started this third-person survival horror with a dose of skepticism, The Sinking City 2 ultimately made me a true believer. This isn’t Temu Resident Evil, even if it calls back to the iconic series in a few ways. This is a survival horror game that delivers what genre fans want in one protoplasmic package. The roughly ten-hour game doesn’t overstay its welcome or get too ambitious. Rather, it throws together eerie atmosphere, grotesque designs, and engaging puzzles to make its rituals work.
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Review Disclosure Statement: The Sinking City 2 was provided to us by Frogwares for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.
The Sinking City 2 may fall shy of becoming the definitive Lovecraftian video game, but it’s definitely an evocative love letter to cosmic horror. Combat works well enough, but it’s the puzzles, narrative, and submerged world that shine from the depths, beckoning survival horror fans to give this game a go.
Pros
- The story is deep on both a personal level, with its compelling characters, and on a wider level, with its cosmic lore.
- The level design is excellent, featuring narratively relevant puzzles and rewarding side investigations.
Cons
- Despite some good ideas, combat can be clunky and unsatisfying.
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The Sinking City 2 Review
