The Sinking City 2 Has Promise, But Still Needs to Prove Itself [Hands-On Preview]

2026 will play host to The Sinking City 2, a Lovecraftian survival horror game and sequel to the 2019 cult classic The Sinking City, which recently found something of a second wind thanks to a 2025 remaster. But if you’ve just jumped in to The Sinking City in preparation for its sequel, you might be in for something of a surprise. Indeed, based on my recent time with the game, it seems to be remarkably different from its predecessor, for better or worse.

Frogwares provided GameRant with an early build of The Sinking City 2, which was bifurcated into two semi-open-world sections. All told, my time with the game (not counting pauses, settings fiddling, et cetera) amounted to about an hour and a half of gameplay—a solid vertical slice. I’m walking away from that gameplay demo feeling a bit conflicted since, although it shows some promise, The Sinking City 2 feels kind of like a step backwards at points, a slide into more conventional, contemporary survival-horror trappings that threatens to undermine what makes Frogwares’ games tick.

I haven’t seen enough to write the game off—again, my time with The Sinking City 2 had its high points—but I have seen enough to be a little concerned. We’ve been feasting on high-quality, unique survival horror experiences recently, what with games like Resident Evil Requiem and Cronos: The New Dawn, and if The Sinking City 2 is looking to compete in the same space, it might be in for a rude awakening.

The Sinking City 2 Is Much More Action-Oriented Than the First Game

Frogwares has been upfront about its goal to make The Sinking City 2 more action-packed, but I was nevertheless surprised by how front-and-center combat was during my preview. The first section of the demo took me through the streets of Arkham, the titular flooded city, and had me splitting my time fairly evenly between combat and exploration. Even so, exploration was driven by the combat loop, as the most valuable non-quest-essential items were HP-restoring consumables and ammunition. This section was peppered with some environmental puzzles here and there, but enemy encounters were very much the meat and potatoes, as it were.

It’s not too hard to see the parallels between this gameplay formula and those of, say, the newer Resident Evil games. In that franchise, you’re set on a mostly linear path with a few short detours, but always with a single, core objective in mind. This construction allows for a more tailored, deliberately paced experience, which is almost always a boon for horror. I got a glimpse of this during my time with The Sinking City 2: whereas the previous game is more of an open-ended adventure, complete with expansive areas and non-hostile NPCs to speak with, Sinking City 2 seems to place a premium on solitude and tension. I was regularly in tight corridors, getting ambushed by monsters, forced to think on my feet with the limited space and supplies available to me.

What I’ve just described is essentially the survival horror formula, and I’m torn about its implementation in this game. On the one hand, the game did feel scarier than its predecessor at times, and the greater focus on action and combat-driven exploration made for a more fast-paced, engaging gameplay loop. On the other hand, The Sinking City 2‘s combat hasn’t quite grabbed me yet: humanoid enemies had massive, cartoonish weak spots that made encounters feel trivial and perfunctory, and the gunplay itself was nothing special, even feeling a bit outdated occasionally. The shooting mechanics of the first game were similarly underdeveloped, but with combat being a greater focus this time around, such shortcomings have a greater impact.

The Sinking City 2’s Puzzle-Solving Is Great

Although I found The Sinking City 2‘s combat watered-down and derivative, I wouldn’t say the same about its puzzle and investigation systems. Much like the first game, as well as Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes games, The Sinking City 2 occasionally requires actual critical thinking from the player. For instance, there was one puzzle I encountered in the Arkham streets section that required me to find a note about cosmic entities, then another about symbols correlating to those entities, and yet another about how these entities relate to a bizarre lightning-rod device. I had to juggle multiple different sets of data, and even busted out a pen and notepad to help arrive at the answer. It wasn’t rocket science, but being forced to actually think through a series of logical steps was a breath of fresh air: “puzzles” in the survival horror space often boil down to simply finding the right item or location, without the need for much thought.

Based on what I saw, The Sinking City 2 seems to have ditched the multicolored “Witcher sense” mechanic of its predecessor, which, in my opinion, is an upgrade; without it, you are further encouraged to actually analyze your surroundings.

Unfortunately, this approach to puzzles took a bit of a back seat during the second section of the demo, which took place at a later point in the story. This section, which I was hoping would lean more into the puzzle and investigation systems, instead doubled down on combat and survival-horror level progression: I would fight some enemies, reach an obstacle, explore until I found the object needed to surpass the obstacle, and then rinse and repeat. There were some instances of the document-based logical reasoning I mentioned before, but it came across as an optional feature here. This section, which took place in a hospital, ultimately felt like Frogwares’ take on a survival horror trope that’s been executed much more effectively in other games.

My Hopes Are Still High for The Sinking City 2

I’ve been careful to refer to The Sinking City 2 in the past tense whenever possible, because I’m not convinced that the aforementioned disappointments will dominate the broader experience. Put another way, The Sinking City 2‘s success will likely depend more on how its various parts come together over the course of so many hours, and less on the quality of a single mechanic or system. Mediocre shooting will matter less if it’s accompanied by consistently strong puzzles, for instance. I’m also looking forward to learning more about Sinking City 2‘s story, since the preview demo only gave me the most cursory look at it. I know the story is about the hero looking for a way to cure his lover of a mysterious coma, and I learned some extra tidbits that Frogwares asked us not to share, but that’s about it. If this narrative can really stick the landing, especially with respect to its Lovecraftian elements, then The Sinking City 2 might still soar, even if other aspects fall flat.