If you have been holding your breath and hoping to return to The Sinking City later this year for the sequel from Ukrainian developer Frogwares, you might want to exhale. The studio has announced that the game has been delayed and will now launch in 2026 on an undetermined date.
The reason behind the delay is simply that Frogwares needs more time to finish The Sinking City 2, in part down to how the ongoing war with Russia has affected their launch timeline. This is explained in better detail by head of publishing Sergiy Oganesyan.
"Developing a game during a war isn't something you can ever really prepare for, but something you need to keep adapting to. At one point, we were losing power for days as drones and missiles hit our power grid. When that tactic stopped working, it became mass drone swarms every other night, going from midnight until dawn. You work all day, then spend the sleepless night listening for explosions, and somehow still need to function the next morning... These things all slowed us down regularly to the point where it just doesn't make sense to try to rush what we have left to meet a date that we no longer feel is worth chasing. How Moscow's tactics to terrorize civilians will change again as winter comes is anyone's guess, so we'd rather be ready to adapt again, knowing we're able to take our time."
It's also noted that the shift to the survival horror genre for this sequel has added extra work with lead game designer Alexander Gresko noting that it has been a "whole new kind of challenge for us". He goes on to add: "Survival horror asks for a completely different kind of design thinking. Tension, pacing, combat, etc. We've always loved the genre as fans, but once you start building it yourself, you realize how much you still have to do. It's exciting, but it definitely makes development slower."
As for the launch window for The Sinking City 2 as of now, the developer is aiming for the first half of 2026, but Oganesyan does elaborate further: "We'd rather be certain than announce something now only to move it again. Rest assured, we're currently aiming for the first half of 2026, so it's a matter of months, not years."
To satisfy some fans, a bunch of new images for the game have been shared, which you can see below. The Sinking City 2, when it does launch, will arrive on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
