The Sinking City 2 Preview: Frogwares puts a survival horror spin on its eldritch setup

When developer Frogwares announced they would be taking a slightly different approach to the production of The Sinking City's follow-up, I immediately became very intrigued as to how this would ultimately look. The original game is an admirable project in many ways but it's also a detective puzzle-like experience for the most part, a game where you explore an unsettling world and uncover clues in the hunt for an answer to the overarching mystery. It worked on these premises but for The Sinking City 2, a new direction is being taken, which is for me, a little more compelling.

Frogwares is moving away from the adventure puzzle angle to instead serve up a more authentic survival horror experience. It's still The Sinking City, so there are design elements and flair that pay homage to the original's design, but at the same time, this follow-up is made to be more frightening and uses design philosophy that any Resident Evil or Silent Hill fan will be familiar with.

I'm saying this as someone who has had the opportunity to play a couple of hours of The Sinking City 2, in a preview build that offered unique gameplay in two separate parts of the wider game. There was a section that tied together a library, the wider open flooded city, and a freaky church, and then an additional section that followed based in a dilapidated and creepy hospital. Before even getting into the gameplay and impressions, you can probably feel where things are going in this game.

Within five minutes of beginning this preview build, two things stood out to me. For one, there was the far more unsettling horror nature of the gameplay, with The Sinking City 2 feeling darker and more claustrophobic than its predecessor. Lights flicker, creatures clamber around outside of your peripheral vision, creaks and groans make the entire world seem hostile - it's all very traditional survival horror in that sense. Similarly, a quick glimpse at the menus, inventory, the camera perspective, how protagonist Calvin Rafferty interacts with the environment, it all feels familiar of survival horror, with Resident Evil and Silent Hill fans being able to hop into this without missing a beat.

You wander around a cramped and tight building where you interact with drawers and chests to snag any materials or bullets found within, all before attempting to open a door and discovering it requires a certain kind of key to unlock. You fight off monsters by shooting at weak points, doing your best to be as accurate as possible to ensure you don't waste any crucial resources, before interacting with the environment when the action slows down to unlock a path forward. Again, it's very traditional survival horror in this sense and as the format simply works, and has for many years, it also feels like a rather natural incorporation into The Sinking City setup in this case.

Credit to Frogwares all the same however, as while they haven't looked to reinvent the survival horror format, they have introduced welcome enhancements befitting of The Sinking City's structure, which other survival horror games could perhaps learn from. For one, the investigative side of the series is somewhat preserved by offering an Alan Wake 2-like case board system where you can collate useful information. Instead of hoovering up letters and documents and losing them in a rather anonymous codex, now you can place the actually useful ones on a board where they are easy to reach so you can access their information quickly. This could be to solve a complex puzzle, with one example in this preview being related to a stone pillar with obscure symbols arranged over it. The idea was to determine the correct alignment of the symbols by cross-referencing documents to understand what each symbol meant and where it was to be used in the tiered arrangement. Again, this isn't a revolutionary idea at all, it's just a slightly more complex way of including puzzle mechanisms that doesn't overwhelm the player or require them to work through the game with a physical notebook on-hand.

On one hand you have the clear survival horror inspiration, which sprinkles in compact inventory management and backtracking when you have the right tools to access otherwise blocked areas. There's levels and locations with just the right amount of complexity and layering to make you feel as though there's always progression routes without standing out as confusing. And yes, it's more frightening, more focussed, and still equally mind-boggling at times from a mystery angle. You can feel the merging of ideas between Frogwares' prior games, like the Sherlock Holmes titles, and how this combines with the survival horror genre in an effective manner. From what I experienced of this preview build, the developer understands the assignment and how it all weaves together to make a cohesive whole. The big question is whether it will all hold up in the full story, as survival horror games can be made or broken by a lack of precision in how they put together their environmental puzzles, the horror atmosphere, and the survival combat, where the Alone in the Dark reboot is an example of a game that didn't quite have the balance correct. Judging by what I've seen, Frogwares has enough of a grasp on the assignment for The Sinking City 2 to stand out and for this to be a project worthy of keeping tabs on if you enjoy these kinds of games.

So long story short, I'm quite impressed by The Sinking City 2 and what I've seen from the game so far. It truly looks as though this could be a meaningful evolution on the The Sinking City setup, and while it could perhaps be playing a tad too safe from a survival horror design standpoint, the wider narrative, world-building, and emphasis on Frogwares' signature puzzle solving should enable this game to stand tall and be a worthy addition to the genre.