The Sinking City 2: A Lovecraftian Survival Horror Experience

The Sinking City 2 is the latest game from Ukrainian studio Frogwares, whose previous works include multiple Sherlock Holmes games. Based on the Cthulhu Mythos, the game has the company doubling down on the survival horror aspect of the experience while cutting down the former title’s open world format to instead have defined explorable areas for each chapter.

Love, Tragedy and Lovecraftian Lore

Calvin Rafferty is looking for a way to save his beloved Faye from the dream world. To do so, he will need to look into a ritual that can bring her soul back to her body, but everything around him is in a dire state. The city of Arkham is currently facing a supernatural flood and the dead are being reanimated by the Slither vermin.

It’s up to the player to move around and face a variety of threats and learn more about the state of things. A big part of the experience is how it’s based on the Cthulhu Mythos, using many terms and details associated with Lovecraftian lore to conceive its original story.

Interestingly, though the story feels like the player is walking into something already in motion, the game is standalone. The things that happened before the story starts are a part of the mystery and it all becomes clearer by the end.

Dealing with Limited Resources

As a survival horror, The Sinking City 2 makes players deal with the pressure of fighting various creatures during the exploration of areas using limited resources. With few bullets and recovery items at your disposal, especially in the early game, fleeing is often a better choice.

This applies even with the multiple difficulty settings the game has. Even though there are four different options that adjust how much the player is punished for being hit by creatures, killing enemies often takes enough bullets that it’s just better to ignore them entirely whenever possible. For instance, defeating one of the late-game bosses can cost all the machine gun bullets gathered throughout the whole game and even crafted ammunition can only help so much.

Casual players can, however, activate immortality and/or invulnerability to hits if they use the easiest setting. There are also various perks that can be unlocked with the Eldritch points gathered throughout the game, including unlimited ammo for each specific weapon. It’s also possible to unlock unique visuals for Calvin and Faye, different flashlight beam colors, concept art and a list of extra passive skills.

As the player progresses through the game, it’s possible to find clues in each area. Besides having text that explains what’s going on in Arkham city and gives more context to the world, these clues are sometimes connected to the puzzles, making them necessary to proceed.

By connecting the right clues in the Investigation Space, the player can also get a Dream Essence. This step isn’t obligatory, but the Dream Essence can be used to unlock Talents, including being able to cause more damage to creatures, take less damage and improve ammo crafting or healing items. At most, players can equip four Talents, including a round one and three with a diamond shape.

Progressing through the Game

Compared to the first game, The Sinking City 2 gives up on the open world format to make each specific moment of the experience tied to different maps. Each area has optional events that may lead to extra items, but once the player moves to the next point of the story, the Investigation Space is reset and these quests are gone until the player comes back in the "New Game Plus"-esque Ex Oblivione mode.

In the first part of the game, players must traverse Arkham’s flooded areas looking for a way to Miskatonic University’s Library Annex. As a result of trying to learn more about the ritual, the player will have to move around various places getting the floodgates open. In each area, murderous creatures and new puzzles of varying difficulty await. After various events, players will be automatically transported to the next areas in a search for the forces getting in the way of Calvin’s and Faye’s desires.

The puzzles are generally interesting in how they tie in with the locales and reward observant players. None of them are particularly hard, often being just a matter of gathering the right clues and connecting their info. For instance, a clue may say you need to know the specific year in which something happened, while another may explain the number you’re looking for is connected to another event you’ve already learned of. It’s also easy to know whether you’re missing clues and items, as rooms are colored blue when there’s nothing left to find, though this is not valid for some areas that count as “outside buildings.”

Meanwhile, combat evolves a little with time with powerful creatures and nasty encounters against hordes happening from time to time. To deal with things, players can get additional weapons and upgrades through exploration, but generally speaking there are a few caveats here that muddle things a little.

The variety of weapons and unlockable content feels limited, even taking into account the extras in the Eldritch Rewards. There's variety to the Talent upgrades, but many of them feel context-specific, and they’re all costly, so it’s sluggish to unlock, making the beginning of a first run a harder affair. Curiously, even the game itself seems to recognize its poor balance, giving the players a lot of ammo during the scripted horde fights instead of just letting them do things.

The variety of weapons and unlockable content feels very limited, even taking into account the extras in the Eldritch Rewards.

On the flip side, the best part of the game is the powerful atmosphere of decay. At first, you’re moving around the devastated, abandoned town in the boat and seeing rain droplets running down the camera. The areas afterward are dark, abandoned, destroyed and oppressive in a way that makes it feel like something will jump at you at any time. The worms make an unsettling sound and moving around the silent areas feels the same, making the player jump at sounds of their own making.

Closing Comments:

The Sinking City 2 is an interesting survival horror inspired by Lovecraftian lore with a strong ambiance to its rotten world. It’s unsettling and oppressive in an interesting way, demanding players to manage their inventory well to have a better chance to survive. While it feels like the game is a little limited in upgrades and could offer more rewarding progression, the experience is striking in the right way for the genre.