Very few games gross me out. Frogwares’ recently released Lovecraftian survival horror game, The Sinking City 2, is one of the few things I’ve played that truly made me go “Bleh.” It’s a game filled with nasty worms, disgusting growths, and buckets of slime. And I had a fantastic time making my way through this creepy adventure, even if Sinking City 2 features a few too many combat encounters.
Out now on PC and consoles, The Sinking City 2 is a standalone sequel to 2019’s The Sinking City. You won’t need to play that game to understand the sequel, as Sinking City 2 features a new cast of characters in a different New England-area city and tells a fresh story unconnected to what happened before.
And it’s not just the narrative that is disconnected from the first game. Sinking City 2 is also a totally different genre. The original game was a narrative-heavy, detective-themed adventure game with some light (and not very good) combat. Sinking City 2 ditches that style of game and instead is a third-person survival horror game clearly inspired by Capcom’s recent Resident Evil remakes.
From gumshoes to hand grenades
At first, I wasn’t sure if developer Frogwares could pull off the genre shift, but after a few hours I was too scared, and too busy nervously counting bullets and health items, to even remember that the studio’s last game wasn’t a survival horror. In other words, Sinking City 2’s shift to Resident Evil-like action horror is a big success.
A huge reason for Sinking City 2’s success as a survival horror game is that every handcrafted level in the game looks properly disgusting and creepy. The game’s setting, Arkham, Massachusetts, is a city being swallowed by the sea, and with the rising waters come thousands of grotesque, unnatural worms.
These critters quickly start to animate the dead and become one of the main foes trying to stop playable protagonist Calvin Rafferty. They’re hardly the only nasty bit of cosmic horror you’ll face across the 10 hours or so it takes to finish the game and most of its smaller side missions, though. I’ll leave those other nasties as surprises for you to stumble upon in the dark.
Of course, you might be wondering, “Hey, why is this Calvin guy hanging around a dead city sinking into the sea that is also filled with worm zombies and monsters?” Well, he’s in love with a woman who is stuck in a creepy, magical coma after a spell they tried went wrong, and now he’s trying to save her before the answers he needs get buried beneath the ocean. You know how it is.
To save her and himself, Calvin is forced to travel on foot and by boat across a few key locations in Arkham. All of these places suck to visit, but make for great horror game levels, including a creepy hospital and a dilapidated nightclub that contains a nasty main star that needs your help.
All of these locations feel big enough that getting around them takes time and grabbing a map is helpful, but none of them are so big that they feel empty or boring to explore. The nightclub in particular does a great job of using tight corridors, ambushes, and different levels to really push you into places that most people would avoid. But you need that key or gear or lever or whatever odd item is demanded to unlock the path forward.
Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot
Like Resident Evil, Sinking City 2 fills these levels with the aforementioned critters and undead. You’ll need to manage your ammo and health items carefully as the game often tosses more enemies at you than you’ll be able to handle. Running away is often a good strategy.
But if you do hold your ground, guns in Sinking City 2 feel properly powerful, though I found some animations to look a bit stiff. That doesn’t make the shotgun any less useful at downing worm-riddled zombies. Heck, even the starting pistol is loud and mean. With a few upgrades, it and other guns become quite effective death-dealing machines, assuming you uh…don’t miss and have the ammo.
-
BACK-OF-THE-BOX QUOTE
“Why is it always cosmic horror? Why can’t we get some cosmic comedy?”
-
DEVELOPER
Frogwares
-
TYPE OF GAME
Third-person action-heavy survival horror
-
LIKED
Game looks properly gross, plenty of scares and creepy monsters, great ending, guns are powerful.
-
DISLIKED
Some minor performance issues, stiff animations, too many wave-based arena fights.
-
PLATFORMS
PlayStation 5 (Played on PS5 Pro), Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC
-
RELEASE DATE
August 18, 2026
-
PLAYED
11 hours. Completed main story and most side missions.
Sadly, while combat is solid, Sinking City 2 has far too many “fight for your life” encounters. These fights lock Calvin in a relatively small area with no escape and throw waves of enemies at him. To get out, you’ll need to kill them all while opening up small crates dotted around each area that refill your ammo and health items a bit.
These moments are the only times when it feels like Frogwares overextended itself, as the combat and controls don’t quite feel responsive or deep enough to warrant so much time dedicated to wave-based firefights.
Thankfully, the rest of Sinking City 2 doesn’t make this same mistake. The game doesn’t drag on and on, levels don’t feel bloated, there aren’t more weapons than needed, and even the game’s cutscenes are never too long or plodding.
This is a very efficient and well-made survival horror game. Sinking City 2 wants players to spend most of their time being freaked out by cosmic horror, grossed out by all the slime and nasty monsters, and solving Resident Evil-like puzzles. It doesn’t want to waste your time with boring open worlds or RPG skill trees.
Sure, in safe rooms dotted around the game you can buy some upgrades, but this system isn’t complicated, you can ignore it if you want, and I doubt it will really make much of a difference.
Suffering and succeeding
Sinking City 2 is also the rare game that features a perfect ending. It’s not a pleasant ending, but it feels appropriate for the game and its Lovecraftian themes. This is a game about trying and failing to defy ancient, cosmic powers and what happens when humans mess about with forces they shouldn’t. Sinking City 2 understands that stories like this don’t wrap up with a happy resolution.
But for the devs behind the game, Sinking City 2 is indeed a happy ending. This is a survival horror adventure made by folks living in Ukraine and dealing with Russia’s ongoing war against the country and its people.
It opens with a message about what they have all endured and sacrificed to create Sinking City 2. And at one point, while exploring the game’s creepy hospital, I found an out-of-the-way area filled with X-rays that show real injuries suffered by people the devs know as a result of Russia’s horrific, ongoing invasion of the country. It’s a grim reminder that this game was made somewhere that isn’t guaranteed a tomorrow.
The odds were stacked against the studio. Powerful forces beyond their control could have ended everything. That still might happen. The war is sadly still happening.
But unlike the characters in most Lovecraftian horror stories, the devs survived, triumphed, and are still standing. And they have a damn fine survival horror game to share with the world.
