The Sinking City

The Sinking City is a pretty-okay detective game, and a pretty 'meh' Lovecraft story.

It's one of those games whose big perk is being a peek into a genre that doesn't get a lot of attention otherwise; altogether, it's well made enough for what it's trying to do, but the problem is that it doesn't seem like it tries to do much at all. If you want a game that's got an LA Noire thing going on with a Lovecraft setting, go for it. If that kind of detective gameplay isn't something you're into, probably best to avoid it - and if you want to try a detective game, just play LA Noire, because this one doesn't do that type of game justice, really.

Story: Pretty straightforward Lovecraft story - madness, murder, malaise. Keeping most of this to myself because spoilers and because I didn't have much interest in finishing the game. Not a lot of connection with the characters, which makes everything and anything that happens pretty unimpactful.

Combat: Bad. Just, genuinely, pretty bad. In a game about intrigue and the horror of the unseen monsters that tear at the threads of society just beyond its fringes, this game has way too many dang 'shoot me!' monsters in it - monsters which soak up bullets, occasionally hit like a truck, but mostly have really cheeseable mechanics and tedious encounters.

Mechanics: Barebones, but serviceable. However, the game shows its hand too early and immediately dumps some spooky supernatural vision powers on you, which sort of dampens the idea that these powers are something unique or even all that interesting; like, yeah, obviously next to nobody else can do this, but you're given these powers right off the cuff and there's no time for the player to adjust to a sense of normalcy before being doused in insane, supernatural visions...that they can control at any time, and which don't seem to have any negative impact on the player character at all. Same goes for the monsters, too- there's no period of calm before you're immediately dealing with the prospect of taking out a bunch of very obviously horrible unearthly monsters.

Altogether, though- look at other reviews. Check out some gameplay videos. If the game really appeals to you, go for it- but I wouldn't.

The Sinking City is a decent adaptation of Lovecraft’s work, meshing dark themes with a variety of great investigations that culminate into tricky decisions. If the combat was less clunky and the world more polished, it would have beckoned all to its desolate shore.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3366171479

I'm on the final mission of this game after not playing for about two weeks and decided to not finish. This game has a lot of good things to offer: good atmosphere, scary monsters, and definitely has direct ties to Lovecraftian horror. My issue with this game is it's just a lot of running around and trying to find things, but if that's your thing, than this game would be for you. I also didn't love how loot was structured. It either felt like I had way to little to be able to do side missions or was given way more than I would be able to carry.

The Sinking City is the platonic ideal of a AA game: an incredibly ambitious project that punches way above its class and does so quite successfully, but that also feels limited at every turn by its technical and financial constraints, a game smack dab in between the Sherlock Holmes graphical adventures Frogwares had developed up to this point, and a third person shooter with RPG elements, whose enjoyment of will squarely depend on your capacity to keep the forest in focus instead of the janky ass trees that form it.

The game follows the path of Charles Reed, a private investigator who arrives at the city of Oakmont following strange dreams and visions that seem to drive people towards it. Over the course of this investigation, our detective will delve deep into the multiple happenings into this city, battle eldritch horrors beyond comprehension, and resist the madness emanating from its citizens. Why is everyone acting so crazy? What lurks below the city? And why the hell does this town have so many goddamn men's clothing stores?!

tSC is divided into several cases and side quests consisting of a rather straightforward loop: Find clues, find the location these clues point towards, arrive at location, put a cap on some Deep One ass, put everything together, and advance to the next case; all the while navigating the open world-ish city of Oakmont, exploring its fog-ridden streets against a rather limited selection of enemies during combat sections featuring music that is between ethereal and industrial. Yes, this is pretty much Silent Hill 2 At Home with an investigation-oriented gimmick, and trust me when I say this without an inkling of negativity.

The art style is, frankly, quite impressive. While most of it comes from the technical prowess of UE4 like lighting, physics and volumetric fog, the characters and scenery also feature really great looking assets, and this is one of those games that you will just gawk at while going through it. Boats and fish corpses litter the semi flooded streets, people wander the street muttering to themselves and acting crazy, and hey, I'd also be a little nutty if my entire town had only 4 faces to share between all its inhabitants.

Staying true to its source material, Oakmont is a seemingly organic location, but once you start paying attention, its veneer will slowly crack, showing its true, janky self. First of all, the city has not been affected by a flood, but a goddamn Kaiju attack. Cthulhu himself has risen up from the depths and dragged his scaly ballsack all across this city: it's littered by boats straight up yeeted into buildings, cars appear to have suffered horrific accidents in places where they could have never even managed to get up to speed even if they tried, and calling the state of its buildings "squalid" would be making them a kindness. It looks positively post-apocalyptic, and while it's super cool to navigate a location that gives out the feeling of dilapidated, unsettling and hostile that one imagines when reading a Lovecraft book, it's... a bit too much.

Like, at first it will feel creepy and unsettling, but quickly you will realize that no, it's just that the level designer went a little too overboard with the ambiance to the point of caricature. The bartender at the Under the Keel inn will stay there buffing the one spot in his counter, while the floor under him is chock full of seaweed. You'll see people sweeping the floor, in a rainstorm, next to a pile of rotting, half eaten fish. The people in Oakmont might be a touch off the rocker, but I'm sure they at least grasped the essentials of sanitation, or at least they'd keep enough of their sense of smell. It's these incongruous details that will keep breaking the otherwise great immersion, and you will soon be able to see the reason: tSC is a painting made with only half a palette of colors. It's a massive city created on limited assets, and as a result, you're going to see a lot of copy-and-paste design that not only looks off place, but also quite repetitive after a short time.

There's only a handful of interior location plans, shamelessly reused over, and over, and over throughout the investigations. Even major locations like the Throgmorton manor will be reused multiple times, and in most of those locations you will expect to fight the same 3-4 monsters in several waves and configurations.

Combat in tSC will start feeling clunky and dangerous, but soon you will realize you can just peace out of most combat encounters. At the start you will only have a melee attack and a pistol to your name, but as you complete investigations and level up, you will obtain new weapons and improve Charles' abilities, gradually becoming a force to be reckoned with. Fights can easily be cheesed by kiting enemies or stunlocking them, and your main hampering is the very limited ammo count per weapon; but at the same time you can just craft ammo and supplies mid fight. The combat is nothing to write home about and it's quite limited and repetitive, but it's never not satisfying to blast a bunch of Chtonians to kingdom come. Keeping an eye out for lootables is also very important to stay topped on materials, but I rarely felt like I was so short that I had to deliberately go out of my way to scavenge more.

Having said this, you might wonder what the point is in making a massive city if most of it is going to be copy-paste buildings and repetitive combat encounters, right? Credit where credit is due, the streets themselves do feel quite organic and lived-in, but most importantly, unlike games with a purely decorative open world like Cyberpunk or LA Noire, the core of the game's cases will consist on opening your map and manually locating where you must go next. I'd hesitate to call it a "minigame", but it is a little problem solving exercise that you will have to do for practically every objective, multiple times per case. Thankfully you will unlock quick travel points as you explore the city, and navigating it never felt tedious or stretched out for me. Much like the combat, both consulting the corresponding archives to figure out where to go next and actually getting there felt quite satisfying to pull out, despite how straightforward this loop is. The game also features a few gimmicks like visions where you have to put a series of embarrassingly obvious events in order, or dispelling illusory walls with your "inner eye", which are probably the more annoying and dragged out moments in the game, but overall, it wasn't too terrible.

Look, there's something that has to be appreciated about a game that knows its limits and tries to make the best of it. During my playthrough I never encountered any game breaking bugs, or collision issues, only a couple of times enemies spawned either below the floor or above the ceiling, and none of it was game breaking, or resulted in unwinnable situations. It's a game that maybe does 4-5 things, but it makes damn sure it does them well, even throwing little gimmicky flourishes like underwater sections, or letting you travel the debris-chocked flooded streets with a surprisingly solid feeling motorboat. It really feels like Frogwares only delivered the quantity they were confident to deliver with quality, which is something rare to encounter in the current gaming landscape. A bold leap from their previous work, and a landing they could hardly have stuck better, given the circumstances.

The Sinking City is a very solid game that tries to do the best with what it can, and that has the right amount of focus on the right places to deliver a mostly alright experience, As long as you are within this wavelength, that will provide 30-ish quite entertaining hours of content, and while I would not buy this game at full price, I would absolutely recommend experiencing if you can snag it at a 30-50% discount.

7/10.

It took me a few attempts to get into this game, but once I was into it I couldn't get enough of it. The atmosphere of it all, the setting, the aesthetics, everything about it, really appealed to me. It was what drew me in and got me to buy the game in the first place. The city and it's surroundings feels wrong, in the best possible way. It feels like people shouldn't be there, yet they are, and just as stuck as you are, willingly or not.

The story was decent enough to keep me engaged and had enough branches that I'd consider another play through, or two, just to experience new things. The missions and side missions are not always straight forward, but the mechanics of being a psychic detective are utilised well enough that nothing is really too difficult to figure out. Some of the side missions are pretty obscure and I wouldn't have found them without either randomly bumping into the things or looking up a guide for the game.

Combat wasn't a challenge for me. I pretty much only used melee combat and avoided guns.

Overall I'd recommend it if one enjoys eurojank of the good variety. After all, not all eurojank is created equal. I'd compare this type of eurojank to Spiders games, and boy do I ever love Spiders games.

Great game. Story and atmosphere are really well done and I enjoyed the detective work, even if it got a bit repetitive. Graphics range from serviceable to excellent. The combat is pretty basic, but does it's job. I like that most of the encounters are overwhelming to begin with and there's a sense of accomplishment once you get good enough gear to tackle the harder ones. Speaking of combat, some more enemy variety would have been nice, but maybe it's consistent with Lovecraft's writing, I don't know. My only criticism is that the open world could have been a bit more interactive. All up a fun game, especially if you're looking for something a bit weird.

A lot of great lovecraftian stories for you to analyze and use your detective abilities in. Sure, the open world is boring, especially while travelling around from one crime scene to another, but when you get there it is fun. The game really could have used greater enemy variety and more than just one boss. But I really enjoyed piecing together the evidence. The game does not give you any pointers, you have to figure out where to go next by reading clues and archives, which is something you dont see much these days.

Nice atmospheric game. Lovecraftian tale, cant go wrong.

I love this game. It's so engaging. Yeah, at some points it might look repetitive, due to the reuse of assets and some mechanics, but the storytelling makes it feel like watching a movie or Netflix series. I definitely recommend this game.

at first it was a good game and it was really fun to solve cases but after spending some time in the map you'll be exhausted from playing it and you just want to end it.
the story line was good BTW
if you like solving puzzles and investigating it is a good game

Cthulhu has finally awakened forty years after Metallica has called it! The game is solid on its own, but if you enjoy the works of Lovecraft then you are going to enjoy it so much more. The references to the lovecraftian lore enrich the already compelling story line, giving it an extra dimension, allowing any true connoisseur, ponderer of the dark reaches of the universe, the mind and possibly not-so benevolent course of creation to have a thirst for knowledge of the possibilities of the unspeakable, and unknown, quenched.
Good puzzles, meaningful choices in dialogues and somewhat challenging combat included.
As for the horror part - the game isn't really that scary once you get a decent amount of bullets.
Also, not very replayeable.

I would recommend this if you like cryptic, open-world, puzzle solving games. I like the it, but for me, I found it very confusing. It's very big map and the navigating is annoying, but I loved I could put markers on my map, even though I wasn't sure what I was suppose to be doing at those locations. I went to couple different ones, but didn't seem to make any progress at all, even after killing monster and checking everything I could.

I do recommend this, even though at times it felt like it was lagging behind in terms of "fun".

Pros:
Lovecraft art style. So good. This and the main story are what keeps the game going.
Main story. If you know or have played other Lovecraft inspired games, you know what to expect. But there is a reason why people like these.

Cons:
Clunky combat. Third person shooter, without a dodge or parry mechanic, leaving you basically shooting at stuff that shoots back at you and might come to melee you as well. You can only aim and shoot and it "feels" dated. HAVING SAID THAT, I played on a controller and it was perfectly fine.
Side quests take you to, in most instances, reused assets, in a way that once you did a couple you already know where to go, because the "triggers" are in most instances in the exact same place

Overall, I recommend it if you are a Lovecraft fun or want to look for an interesting investigation adventure. At least on a sale.

Way too much walking between objectives but otherwise a decent HP-inspired game. Had travel been compressed it would have been more like CoC, but as it stands this is a little less enjoyable. Solid endings though!

While it suffers from janky animations, occasional stutters, and a repetitiveness in gameplay, this is still a pretty good detective story. The Lovecraftian elements mixed with 1920s American culture make for a really solid combination. The world design is cool, but it's barely interactive, with a lot of repeating NPCs and interiors. Combat is alright, though the enemy encounters does get repetitive, and sometimes they get stuck in the roof of buildings. It's an imperfect game, but it's still enjoyable especially if you're fond of a detective story with Lovecraftian elements. I’d recommend this game, but only when it's on sale.

Only if you love Lovecraft, don't have high standards, and get it on sale.

This game has problems. Seriously...

CONTROLS SUCK: Sidestepping triggers walking. LMB is interaction button. You need to hold LMB down for some time instead of just click-interact. Overall, controls suck.

MAP: is too big and too empty. This game suffers for trying to be what I consider an AC/Deus Ex hybrid: A game that could work as level-based episodic story, set in an open world where there's nothing to do except driving a boat.

The idea and story are good however. Plus, I love Lovecraft, so this one was a nobrainer for me. Still, hope the sequel is much better.

Edit: If you like supernatural detective angle, I suggest you get Murdered: Soul Suspect instead. It's a much better game in every aspect except Lovecraft

TLDR: Actually pretty good, but doesn’t respect your time and filled with frustrating mechanics.

General Thoughts/Overview:
The Sinking City (TSC) is a good game with good ideas that you get frustrated and bored with really fast because it also happens to be designed to be incredibly frustrating and annoying to play.

We are Charles Reed, hardboiled detective with visions of the supernatural. We’ve been drawn to the recently flooded City of Oakmount, to find both the numerous missing people drawn there, and also the source of our visions. Can we unravel the mysterious source, and save our self, the city, and even the world? Or will we end up just another lost soul, swallowed by the rising waters?

Pros:

• Fantastic atmosphere. Oakmount really sells the feeling of a half flooded city. At first glance it looks wonderful and if it had had a little less asset reuse it could have felt the part the whole way through.
  
• The audio. Excellent at building tension and getting the old heart going, combined with decent ambience, it complements the art to lend an eerie feel to the game.
  
• Mostly well thought out and well written. I was always interested to see where quests were leading and wondering how they tied into the world.
  

• TSC doesn’t respect your time. You need to mark almost all way-points yourself. Now, I enjoyed this the first time… But some quests give ten places at once, some go through many locations, all with an extremely limited fast travel system, and a map which only shows the points for your currently selected quest… meaning you have to quest cycle, each time you add a new point, making a mental note to do anything you pass… This map organisation must have taken up a solid hour of my time. If not for free, a skill point cost to automate this could have helped.
  
• This limited fast travel was a killer. Quests can be so far from way-points it felt like they were put there out of spite. I’d have loved it if there were some small unique interactions here and there throughout the city to see as we moved. Results of quests/side quests, unique dialogue or scenes as the story progressed, maybe even foreshadowing... The world, however, felt like they just focused on basic designs then copy pasted to fill miles of corridor. Which is a shame, because what was designed was great… With a bit more care it could have been a journey, an exploration, and not a chore. Instead it felt like a time sink. (To speed things up, hit a manual save and load it, getting you to a travel point, and thus destination, minutes faster.)
  
• Combat is just too simple and easy. Monsters aren’t a threat at any point. If it wasn’t for the music building tension and the need to clear later poi’s, combat would just be another time sink. The guns don’t feel particularly different (except the tommy, which goes ‘brrr’) Infested areas paint a picture of tension and dread, but if you could zoom the camera out and put the benny hill theme on, it would have just been laughable. Charles can run for longer than an Olympic marathon runner without ever losing speed. The number of times I just circled a bus, or a car, or just ignored the mobs and carried on with my shortcut as if it were just another street with an annoying barricade at one end, then turned to look at the pack of creatures running back and forth below me, sometimes stopped by nothing more than a ‘police, do not cross’ stick barricade… It’s laughable. What’s worse is that the guns do almost no damage, but melee interrupts monster attacks. So you have a situation where you’re encouraged to use your spade instead of your shotgun for the vast majority of your fights.
  
• The half arsed crafting and inventory system is also quite heavily responsible for this. Materials are everywhere, you can craft anywhere, and you can only hold a pitiful number of items… What this means in reality is that because combat is melee focused, and materials are plentiful, you end up with a stacked inventory. All this renders most quest rewards pointless. Because apparently I turn down payment when I’ve got all my bullets on me?
  
• It’s also sad that there’s almost nothing to buy. Bullets are meant to be currency, but with no economy it’s irrelevant anyway. No stash in my hotel room for extras, nothing to spend the cash on, no upgrades for my guns, or payment to the proprietor needed? No food or meds or improvements I can give to a faction or a family to help out? No nothing? OK then…
  
• Your choices don’t matter. There’s no impact, no meaning to any of it. In some ways I like that nothing you do really matters, gives you that feeling of being small… But the ‘choices should matter’ part of me just won’t shut up. This is a game where we’re meant to be messing with things we don’t understand as a pivotal point which can swing the very destiny of mankind as a whole… a bit of graffiti here and a line of dialogue there might have made it feel like any of it mattered.
  

• Respect the players time. Basic QoL improvements to show this would be automatically placing case marks on the map, have ALL the case marks visible at once, allowing us to filter to one case, and allow us to teleport FROM anywhere (even if we keep the set places we teleport TO).
  
• Completely remove the crafting, or have it set in specific places/times, and increase the number of the kits and bullets we can carry significantly.
  
[*] Add a hidden points system for the various factions, changing the face of Oakmount and the available quests based on these hidden points. (For example, you side with supernatural? More attacks in places, fewer people on the streets, more empty areas to explore with more bodies. Conversely, you side with the heavily armed groups? Fewer monsters, maybe the odd cleared infested zone. But more checkpoints, possibly the odd random encounter demanding ‘tax’, areas for the locals safer, but more dead innsmouthers in points of interest.)

I liked it at first but I found the story didn't really grip me. No consequences to choices and while solving cases is interesting at first it gets repetitive and boring after a very short time. Combat is also boring and frankly unnecessary

This has been a fun journey, one that I'd definitely recommend, now that you can often grab it for 8-15 quids.
The setting (pulp Cthulhu mythos), the eerie atmosphere, the dark comedy (like a particular cake that shows up in a particular mansion after a vigil), the dialogues, the characters all add up to a very enjoyable CoC experience.
The definite strongpoint of the game are the cases and the decisions you can make. No black and white, no right and wrong, this is a very crooked city with very crooked people all around.
The concept is absolutely smashing it!
Then there is the delivery of all these. Now that's a bit janky, and that's why I recommend it on a sale but not full price.
The game has a single color pattern. Models and animations are lacking. NPCs and sometimes even adversaries are spawning into walls where then they are stuck for an eternity. The combat is a bummer, it's flat and tedious. Traversing the terrain gets real boring real fast.
Now as I said, I very much recommend this journey, because the story and investigations, the atmosphere makes up for all the jankiness; but it1s only fair to say that presentation and gameplay is not its strongsuits.

This is a fine piece of craftsmanship.The atmosphere is in place; it's entertaining but a bit repetative. An OK game from my point of view.

This one is tough. There is so much to like here, but also many glaring issues.

Pros:
- Awesome artstyle
- Very good graphics
- Decent writing
- Detective mechanic works well and is interesting
- Sound design is very good

Cons:
- Combat is a clunky mess
- Limited weapon / enemy variety
- Towns feel dead due to lack of NPC interactions, can't order a drink at the bar let alone talk to random NPCs on the streets
- room at the inn is a missed opportunity for a "home base"
- Every single ending is underwhelming, lacks a boss fight of any kind.
- The game is quite long, longer than it needs to be


As mentioned previously, this is a hard one to judge. Overall, I liked the game due to the interesting detective angle as well as awesome art style and graphics despite some major complaints.

I'd wait to get this game on a steep sale.

Pros:
- Interesting concept
- fascinating investigative mechanics
- characters feel fleshed out


Cons:
- Lost all my progress after uninstalling
- Combat/Shooting feels stiff and clunky
- Enemies will respawn if you die
- Enemies feel too strong/cheap to die to (wouldn't be a huge deal if I didnt keep dying in a house I have to clear in order to investigate)

The premise of this game is amazing: A private detective on an actual mission to solve cosmic horror madness. The gameplay itself is entertaining. Finding clues is mostly fun, and deducing the outcomes makes you feel smart and gives you worthy choices to contemplate. This is a thinking person's game.

The shooting and combat is fun enough to give me a reason to use the game's various weapons. When you run out, you'll find out that the shovel is one of the best weapons when you learn how to dodge attacks.

The ending falls a little short considering the build-up. After taking my time in the game itself, I did a speed-run through all the endings to see if I had chose the wrong one. The problem is none of them are very satisfying. It is still worth playing though.

Good game with a great story and lackluster open world. The lore and atmosphere of the city is amazing with the Lovecraft influences. Throughout the main story and side quests there are a lot of choices to make which impact the end of each quest. Investigation mechanics were great. Combat was good although only features a few different types of enemies throughout the game. My biggest complaint is the world was too big for the content included in the game. A lot of time spent was running from point to point in the city with rarely any interactions in between. Overall a solid game that was well worth the price on sale.

A deeply immersive game set in the Lovecraftian world, Sinking City has been a joy to play and a strong recommendation. There's something satisfying in walking through a city during the early 1900s with your collar high on your neck and madmen walking past you muttering and talking to themselves. An eerie feeling in the air and talk of strange creatures circling around a flooded city buried in secrets.. Interesting characters with their stories and motives. Details you can find scattered around houses that complete the picture and urge you pay attention to everything. This is my first venture to the Lovecraft world in gaming and it has exceeded my expectations.
It is not a perfect game however and I should note some its weaknesses. Assets and locations have been extensively reused and one can't help but noticing it even if they don't try to complete it's far-too-many side quests. Some of the side quests have had interesting stories but many others were repetitive quests of killing mobs and interacting with one or two things. This wouldn't be a problem if coupled with some variety in gameplay and design but unfortunately it is not the case.
Choices matter, in a sense, in this game which welcomes a second playthrough. I, however, don't think I'll be doing so because of its dragged out side-quests and a general "fatigue" I realised I felt playing it.

Not a horror game, but it’s still a nice detective game. After a while some stuff (for example looking for clues) becomes repetitive and boring, but it's still worth playing and city setting is nice.

While the trailer initially piqued my interest, the gameplay itself fell flat. Despite the promise of choices, they feel limited, making the experience feel restrictive. The puzzles are uninspired, lacking any real challenge or innovation, and the visuals leave much to be desired. Overall, it's a disappointing experience. I cannot recommend it.

Terrible. I really tried to enjoy this. I'm a sucker for lovcraftian horror. However, this is plagued by poor design. An incredible amount of trekking across the city and back tracking between areas that offer no benefit or exposition. The enemy variety is limited. Combat is clunky. The investigations are half baked. The narrative has potential but is so bogged down by everything else that's wrong with the game I just don't really care to find out what happens next.

The Sinking City is an investigative third-person shooter hybrid where you play a private investigator in an HP Lovecraft inspired Sandbox City. The game feels like a tuned down clone of Red Dead Redemption with a Noir skin. The quality of the presentation is noticeable, but the game is so tuned down to bare essentials, that it could never be rated as well as other famous Sandbox games.

You begin your work on the docks of Oakmont, an half-submerged city, besieged by strange forces after a flood sank more than half of the roads into waterways. From the beginning, the investigate aspects of the game are introduced by short exchanges and questioning on the docks. Sinking City does not challenge the player very far with how to construct an investigation. All the tools, clues and journal notes are highlighted and updated automatically. All you need to do is look around rooms for hand icons or dots, or some premonition effects. Charles, the main character, can see illusory walls and has visions helping his work. The only time-consuming activity investigating, is reading map coordinates as street corners, having to plot them manually on the map.

Once you're acquainted enough with Reed's investigative tooling, you'll be challenged by the Wylebeasts of Oakmont. This is when you realize Sinking City isn't a very good shooter. All the beasts move so fast, they can dodge bullets. When I played, this meant, I would revert to use melee to defend myself, except against the bigger critters. You don't get a shotgun or a rifle right away in the game, but it doesn't matter because both are quite limited by the amount of bullets you find or that you can craft. Bullets are used as money in Oakmont, but you'll spend those about 3 times over the course of the entire game.

The biggest issue in this game, is it's easy... To game it. The Save/Load system in Sinking City is completely brain dead. Whenever you save, if you reload, the game will have you start back at a fast travel spot, resetting all in-game containers. All the resource rarity in the game is no longer effective. All you need to do is go into a house, clear the spawning critters, loot everything, then save, then reload. Rinse, repeat. All the scenes, where you're supposed to be stressed by magical spawns of critters: Run into them, save, then reload, then run it back.

Another big issue with this game, is it's not really a RPG. Yes you have a skill tree with experience and skill points you can invest in that tree, but the majority of all purchase-able skills have very little to no impact on the game. The best skills you can grab are for sparing resources crafting, so you can stop the save/reload scumming for resources. You can also increase the amount of Molotovs and Grenades you can carry so you can fast-track the poorly designed combat system. (spamming melee is still more effective imho)

After roughly 50 hours of gaming in Oakmont, I completed everything I had to complete. Unlocked all the suits in the wardrobe, another decoration, and got my fill. For a game at its regular price, it's rather disappointing. I love the presentation, I love the story line, but everything else is just not worth recommending. I bought Mad Max for around 30$, regular price, and it's worth this game 3 times over.

Would I check Sinking CIty 2 if it's ever published? Maybe, with a good sale, hoping Frogwares invested time in crafting game mechanics with a little more value.

I had a hard time deciding on if to recommend this one. I am going to recommend it but with a big ASTERIK. If you can handle very slow pased gameplay that's repetitive than I would recommend this one for it's world building and story. however by the end it feels like my choices didn't matter all that much, and the combat was a bit painfully sluggish and most of your time will be spent walking around and randomly clicking on a wall to read a poster and get all the evidence.

This game is so much fun. I'm not finished by any means but its a super solid Frogwares title. Better than some of the more recent Sherlock games, easily.

Great game. Had to mod the starting splash screen out for it to run at 2k and above, and the game crashed repeatedly after the end credits, but I completed the game (and it registered) so it's grand.

Brilliantly laid out game with a lot of fun narrative quests. Devs did their research, added in a lot of lore from the mythos. Very happy overall with it, just a shame about some of the fetch quests and general bugs I had to mod out. 7.5/10 I'd say. Well worth the money if played on hard mode.

I played this game out of curiosity. I like to try from time to time something Lovercraftian or other horror game that seems to have a spark and soul. I saw it doesn't have a high ranking.
I have never played so much detective focused game before, if I don't count some older adventure games, maybe that is why I do not see it so negatively.
So for me this is still a good game. But if it would have just something less it would be a meeh game.
Let me talk about the positives first.


The detective aspect of the game works. You gather clues and progress in the story by inspecting scenes, objects. Talking to people. Using your special senses to be able to view other world, see thru images, like there is a wall, but with your senses you can dispel it and tadaa secret room, or you dispel illusion from a sculpture and there is no status, but diary instead.
You often find a clue that needs additional research in the library, or city hall, or newspapers, or police, or hospital. Depending on the character of info. You have 4 categories each with 4 options. You need to select 3 and select a clue from your Cases (instead of journal) that you are trying to solve. In 90% of cases it was not that hard to know what to select and only seldom I had to try more then 2 times. This was pleasantly done, nothing hard.
I played it on middle detective difficulty, to have less hints. And every time I discovered something I had a good feeling about it. I never had to use a guide to ruin the experience. It was possible to finish the game without it. And that is often hard in adventure games or some mystery games I have tried in my past.


Fighting aspect of the game is good as well. You get that feeling that you do not have enough ammunition to shoot everything, sometimes you have to run. And that only underscores the atmosphere of this sinking depressive city. There aren’t many types of enemies, but it is enough. Still with some other 2 thrown into the mix, it would be better. Your weapons are fitting. If you fight against humans, they are quite powerful. Too bad monsters have so many HP. At least with upgrades to melee you can kill Stigians faster and with one strike. That saves a lot of ammo as you suddenly do not need to shoot those nimble little bastards. The enemies can use tactics to a certain degree. If you focus your aim on one, it will try to dodge so that you spend more time aiming and others can attack you. Spitters atack from afar while melee closes the distance. At times they can make a real bad situation for you if they mix correctly for the correct area. Fights are challenging and when you encounter that big monster, you better run, as it takes a lot to kill it and as one of 2 I think it attacks your psyche or sanity as well as health. You have also molotovs and monsters will try to avoid the fire. You have grenades and traps. I rather took a flight than place traps.

Faces are not that bad. It's a game from 2021 and B title at best, with such funds. So don’t expect Horizon Zero dawn level. Some details were really good. I am glad that there was no sloppy job from developers as I was afraid at the start.

Voice over is really good. I didn’t wish for other voices through the game. Some were outright fantastic. Throgmorton or Carpenters or archeologist - just to mention few.

Map was surprisingly good. You could place hundreds of notes there. It also underscored the detective aspect. You found or uncovered something and you could go immediately into map and place marks there. Everytime you discover something about where something is, a new mark is tied to that discovery and added among possible marks that you could place in map. That was very pleasantly executed.

Map of the outside world is believable. The town and the map make sense. A town could be layed like that and it creates a lot of interesting places. The part with infested areas worked. Although it was like a fist to the eye when thinking about the reality of the place, I mean people walk around it, never going inside, but the place causes no commotion for common folk or law.
As a quick travel location you could use phone booths. They are placed surprisingly practically.

And there is crafting which is done nicely. It was not boring, or tedious. Easy to orient and use.

Now to the negatives.
Interiors come only in a few models, especially 3 types of interior architecture dominate the city. First building you will go into will haunt you in 20 different modifications throughout the entire game. Other one is a mansion with a cellar, again 20 …. And third one is a little factory, again 20 …. Then there are also some other interiors, that thankfully made it thru this strict architecture control hahaha.

Music is just uninteresting. Not outstraight bad, just so bland. The best music was while diving - bubbles hahaha.

I hated autosaves. They use a lot of slots while progressing through a case. Example, you have 4 in total. Just after one dialog, sometimes it takes 2 or 3. Not sure about details, but the situation that I had very often, while wanting to try a different approach to see different reactions, was hard as 3 slots were almost always saved within 10 seconds. And when you load you are near some autosave location, like a phone booth. Why?
Also why punish us with only 3 manual save locations?

The game is somehow feeling clunky at times. Hard to describe. Maybe when all the negatives are pummeling you down, you just feel the game is clunky.

It was a good adventure detective.

This is an excellent detective game that actually makes you work for finding clues and solving puzzles without it feeling like the game is holding your hand. I'm very much enjoying the PC version in comparison to the console version. The textures sometimes go a little crazy but I like to think that just adds to the surreal ambiance

Great detective game, awesome Lovecraft game, definitely would recommend.

nice game
very playable on steamdeck

gameplay wise it's a mix between
the new Openworld sherlock and the cthulhu mythos

Overall an enjoyable experience, especially if you are a fan of the Lovecraft vibe. The game itself felt like an unpolished gem. The lore, atmosphere, and some of the investigative mechanics were a pleasure to experience. But there are clear issues with the map design, combat mechanics, and story. Honestly it felt like the studio was under equipped to handle the scope of the game they were intending to create. But there are clear positives and it feels like the studio cares for the Lovecraft name. They have announced a second game as of the making of this review and if they learn from their mistakes in this game, it should shape up to be an incredible experience.

I still didn't finish the game, and probably will do it because I have too much spare time... But since it's on sale, it's a good time to make you think if you want to invest your time here.

The good points are atmosphere and setting, which are truly great. The city looks and feel really weird, as you would expect from a Lovecraftian setting, but mind that it's mostly empty, in the sense that there is little interaction with NPCs and few cool things to discover. It was build with procedural generation and assets are repeated to exhaustion, but that wouldn't be a problem if there were interesting stuff to do in them. Unfortunately, gameplay is really, really shallow, with many lazy design choices.

The "investigation" side is simply a matter of finding white dots and clicking on things in correct order. Eveything is quite linear and little is left for you to figure out. There was a point when I used a couple of brain cells to put 2+2 together and figured out my next objective... just to get there and find it still completely empty, since the game wanted me to go click on thing in two different places to actually "figure out". Oh, sure, you have to make choices, but 16 hours in it and I still didn't see any relevance on the ones I made.

The "combat" part is not that great, but also not that bad. You can't avoid it sometimes, but it's not something you would go after because it's fun gameplay. Spawns are random, but not in a good, everything-can-happen way. You may step inside a building and find a bunch of incredible strong enemies spawned, then just run outside, walk away a little bit, come back and find just a couple of weak ones.

The game wants you to think that resource management is relevant, but it isn't. You have limited carrying capacity, but you find resources everywhere, and they always respawn (when you reload or simply go away and then back, I don't know). So if you get low on something, you can just loot again and again the same boxes. The only moment where you may run out of some resource is during the short time you stay inside the buildings, because, as noted above, if you go out and in again, enemies respawn (no, it's not a timer or the like, it's literally just stepping a few meters out).

All of this makes the side quests irrelevant, because they don't bring any different challenge, and only reward you with resources that you don't need. Sure, you gain XP to spend on barely significant skills. Be sure to get the inventory upgrade ones, because if you are already full and get some resources as mission rewards, they just... vanish forever. Yes, it's that lazy...

So, well, if you want to experience the few good points by yourself, go on and get in on sale. Take a look at the pcgamingwiki page to tweak the graphic effects to your like. Don't worry about resources, side quests and just follow the main story, which is standard derivative stuff (apparently there is just one story that Lovecraftian games can tell). Between this, Call of Cthulhu, Dark Corners and friends, it's hard to believe that the only really good Lovecraftian game may still be the first Alone in the Dark....

[table]
[tr]
[th]Category[/th]
[th]Score[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]🏆 Overall Rating[/td]
[td]9/10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]📖 Story[/td]
[td]★★★★★[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]🎮 Gameplay[/td]
[td]★★★☆☆[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]🎨 Graphics[/td]
[td]★★★★★[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]🎵 Sound Design[/td]
[td]★★★★★[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]↩ Replay Value[/td]
[td]★★★★☆[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]😧 Difficulty[/td]
[td]★★★★★[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]🐛 Bug free?[/td]
[td]★★★★☆[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]🖥️ PC Requirements[/td]
[td]★★☆☆☆[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]📈 Game Length[/td]
[td]★★★★☆[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

12/10. Ukrainian Resident Evil+Sherlock Holmes vibed from their previous games with Lovecraft elements.
Totally recommended for survival-horrors enjoyers!

played the game and now my cat is racist

Take a cup of coffee and enjoy amazing detective-driven plot :) Waiting for sales to take some DLC-s. Like!

As you explore areas (particularly Grimhaven Bay), civilians will often randomly attack you on the open street in the middle of the day, for as little as venturing too close.
If you're unfortunate enough to be attacked by two of them in the same fight, and you decide to kill them out of self defense, you will automatically drop dead like a ragdoll (because of your sanity meter).
After this happened to me for the third time, I finally realized my time is better spent elsewhere.

Additional issues I would highlight:
- Most of the budget seems to have went into the trailer cinematics. They absolutely do not paint an accurate picture of the final product. They aren't even included as cutscenes.
- You pick up what seems to be an entire magazine of machine gun rounds, only to receive one single bullet. Every... damn... time.
- Game encourages you to place your own map markers all over the map. However, after ~20 markers, you are not allowed to place any more.
- As you explore, you are able to prematurely waltz into areas that you're only supposed to discover later. This allows you to explore sometimes fantastic and detailed environments with absolutely nothing to pick up or examine (due to your unexpected timing), ultimately resulting in nothing but wasted time.
- Whoever came up with the concept of illusionary walls should never go near the drawing board of a game ever again.
- There are only four kinds of monster-type enemies, all of which you will no doubt meet in the first few hours of the game.
- Monster-type enemies feel like one-trick ponies: they always spawn right around you once you walk past a certain trigger. This artificial difficulty is the only way for them to become a threat, since thank to this, you can't really pick them off from a distance. Also, their ability to spawn in from thin air makes zero sense, if you ask me.
- All of Lovecraft's works appear in the game... as a series of collectibles and easter eggs, of course. It makes no sense for them to be present in this context. The Necronomicon is lying in the middle of the street (you pick it up, shoot a boss, get some XP and call it a day). Brain containers are scattered all over the city, but no one as much as raises an eyebrow (not even the protanonist, as he finds them).
- Besides all that, the game feels like you're stuck in a Lovecraft universe side story that takes place far away from the action. Instead of Arkham or Boston, you're stuck in Oakmont. Ctulhu can't be bothered to show up for this gig... so it's his daughter. I watched all the endings on Youtube after I ragequit the game, and all three possible endings are rushed and simply atrocious, with zero sense of payoff.
- There are several other issues that other reviewers already pointed out dozens of times - copy-pasted repeats of internal environments - but my pain threshold is high enough to look past all of those.

I consider myself a fan of both Lovecraft and Frogwares, and I'm generally onboard with all the positives mentioned by other reviewers so far. However, I also believe that here, the negatives unfortunately outweight the positives in the end. I hope The Sinking City 2 will distance itself from the first game and change all of that. Unfortunately, those overblown cinematic trailers are already casting a very familiar foreshadow...

An absolute tedious chore this game is to play... Why can't devs just make games fun anymore?

A fantastic Lovecraftian story. This story keeps you on your toes from beginning to end even though I have yet to finish it. Pick this game up especially if you can't help but stare into the Abyss and hope you go mad from the experience and know your K.J. Necronomicons well.

After finally finishing this game and getting all achievements, I can just about recommend this game. Barely. If you're really into HP Lovecraft I would definitely say pick this up on sale you will be able to overlook some of the games glaring issues.

Despite liking this game I would say this game is miles too long for the story it was trying to tell. There is far too much bloat in this game and I was rushing to the finish of this game as I hit my final hours.

That being said, I did really enjoy the characters, the lore, the graphics, story and most importantly the atmosphere the game created. I hope Frogwares develops on the solid foundations they created with this game.

6/10, maybe a 7/10 if youre a HP lovecraft fan.

6 is a good score to me btw

WHAT THE GAME IS BAD AT
-Doing the same things over and over for each case
-Underwater portions aren't enjoyable and is shallow
-Choices don't mean anything in the grand scheme of the story
-Enemies suck
-Fast travel hopping is a must because outside the quest buildings, there is no life to the city
-Most buildings you interact with have the same interior
-Psyche is just annoying

WHAT THE GAME IS GOOD AT
-Atmosphere
-Setting
-Monkey Guy lore

I generally tend to enjoy most games that are set in the Cthulhu universe however, I had a lot of issues with this game. It's set in an open world that has very little to do, and ultimately just leads to a lot of very tedious traveling back and forth in what's essentially a mostly empty, lifeless environment. The plot starts off strong but quickly becomes forgettable and the combat is a mess. If you're looking for something set in the Cthulhu universe, I'd recommend Call of Cthulhu over this.

It's ok, the game play really drags out after the first chapter. You just want to progress the fatalistic story, and keep getting interrupted by side quests. About 30% of my playtime was looking for the one thing I missed to activate the clue, or the mind palace pointer so I can do the next thing I need to do.

The sinking city is a game that had the opportunity to become the best of the genre, but ended up being one of the worst in my opinion. The Investigation mechanic is not hard if you get the hang of it, which is on the first one or two cases. The navigation throughout the city is bad, the so called 'Infested areas' are basically areas there is no point in visiting and there aren't many cases that require you to pass through them as well. You might think you could 'clear' those areas, yet, that's not the case unfortunately. The combat mechanics on top of that is abhorrent at best. Finally, the achievements are easily obtainable yet most of them can be missed during investigations without a guide. If you make a wrong save slot you are doomed to a second play through.
I had really high hopes for this Lovecraftian but it was just a boring experience overall.