REVIEW / The Sinking City 2 (PC)

Sequels have a tricky job: they need to remind you why you cared about the original while giving you a reason to come back for more. The Sinking City 2 takes that challenge and, rather boldly, decides to shake up almost everything that made the first game stand out. As a follow-up to the 2019 Lovecraftian mystery adventure, the sequel returns to the nightmare-soaked world of Arkham but trades much of the original’s open-world detective focus for a tighter survival-horror experience. This time, you’ll spend less time freely investigating a sprawling city and more time navigating dangerous environments, solving puzzles, conserving resources, and trying not to become dinner for something that definitely shouldn’t exist. It’s a significant departure, but one that gives the sequel a more focused identity while still keeping the bizarre cosmic horror that made the original memorable. The result is an intriguing follow-up that gets plenty right, even if a few of its changes and technical problems keep it from fully escaping the shadow of its predecessor.

The atmosphere is where The Sinking City 2 really starts showing off. The city of Arkham is soaked in grimy architecture, flooded streets, decaying interiors, and enough unsettling little details to make even walking down a hallway feel suspicious. The combination of oppressive lighting, grotesque creature designs, environmental storytelling, and excellent sound design creates the sort of tension where you start questioning every suspicious noise. The game’s art direction does a fantastic job of making the city feel simultaneously beautiful and completely rotten. There are moments when the game looks genuinely gorgeous in that deliberately disgusting sort of way.

That atmosphere also benefits from the game’s more focused structure. Rather than giving you a sprawling open world like the first game, the developer, Frogwares, has embraced the interconnected environments and deliberate exploration associated with modern survival horror. You’ll wander through locations, unlock shortcuts, hunt for resources, inspect clues, solve puzzles, and inevitably discover that the hallway you thought was safe five minutes ago has become a monster convention. The map design encourages you to pay attention, while safe rooms provide those delicious little moments of relief that survival-horror fans know all too well. The influence of modern Resident Evil is obvious, but Frogwares manages to put enough Lovecraftian personality into the formula that it doesn’t feel like a total copycat.

The puzzles in The Sinking City 2 are another area where Frogwares gets to remind everyone that, yes, this is the studio behind years of detective adventures. Some of the game’s best moments come from poking around environments, finding clues, connecting information, and figuring out exactly how some bizarre contraption is supposed to work. Optional investigations and hidden areas can also reward players with supplies and upgrades, giving exploration an actual purpose beyond collecting decorative junk. The detective elements aren’t nearly as dominant as they were in the original, but honestly, that’s probably for the best given the direction of this sequel. Still, longtime fans expecting another detective sandbox should prepare themselves for considerably more shooting and considerably fewer Sherlock Holmes moments.

And speaking of shooting, combat is a little better. That may sound like faint praise, especially when discussing a game that wants to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Resident Evil, but the improvement over the original is substantial. Weapons feel more responsive, enemies have vulnerable areas that reward accurate shots, and the dodge mechanic gives a fighting chance when something with too many limbs gets personal. Resource management also makes each encounter more interesting, because ammunition and healing supplies aren’t exactly growing on trees. Unfortunately, the combat doesn’t completely escape its awkward side, with some enemies feeling surprisingly bullet-spongy and certain encounters becoming more tedious than terrifying.

That problem becomes more noticeable as the adventure progresses. Enemy variety isn’t especially deep in The Sinking City 2, meaning you’ve pretty much figured out the neighborhood’s monster population before you’re ready to leave town. Some later encounters also lean heavily into enemy waves and gauntlets, which can feel like the game briefly forgot that tension is more frightening than being handed a shopping cart full of ammunition and told to go nuts. Boss encounters don’t always land with the same impact as the game’s quieter horror sequences, either. It’s a strange contrast because the game is at its best when you’re cautiously exploring and wondering what horrible thing is around the corner, not when it transforms into a shooting gallery. Less action and a little more dread would have suited the game beautifully.

The story in The Sinking City 2 is similarly uneven. You play as Calvin, a different protagonist from the first game. His mission to rescue his lady friend, Faye, gives the adventure a clear emotional anchor, and their relationship is refreshingly sincere compared with the usual survival-horror parade of doomed couples and people who apparently make terrible decisions for sport. There are some genuinely intriguing Lovecraftian ideas sprinkled throughout the campaign, and Frogwares does a nice job connecting the supernatural horror to Arkham’s flooded, collapsing world. The narrative also gives the setting a surprising amount of emotional weight, particularly when the devastation surrounding Arkham begins to feel like more than just scenery. Unfortunately, the story can feel rushed, particularly toward the end, with the final stretch arriving before the narrative has completely earned its conclusion.

The pacing has a similar issue. The Sinking City 2 lasts roughly 10 to 15 hours depending on how thoroughly you explore, which is actually a pretty comfortable length for this kind of survival-horror adventure. The problem is that some of that brevity feels less like purposeful restraint and more like Frogwares running out of road. The latter portions don’t always maintain the same sense of discovery established earlier, and the ending can feel abrupt. There’s also limited opportunity to return to previous areas and clean up things you missed, which makes the world feel more segmented than it initially appears. Still, I’d rather have a focused horror game that knows when to leave the party than a 30-hour slog padded with endless tentacle cleanup.

Unfortunately, the technical side is where things get much uglier, particularly if you’re hoping to play on a Steam Deck. As it currently stands, The Sinking City 2 is showing as Unsupported on Steam Deck, with compatibility information indicating that the game’s graphics settings cannot be configured to run well on the handheld. That’s not merely a case of lowering a few sliders and accepting some crunchy visuals. The performance problems and crashes make the Steam Deck experience particularly difficult to recommend. The game can get running at reduced settings, but that doesn’t magically solve the bigger stability problem. If your primary gaming machine is a Steam Deck, this is one Lovecraftian mystery I’d recommend solving from a safe distance.

The weird part is that the platform situation isn’t universally grim. The Sinking City 2 is listed as Verified on Steam Machine, with its tested configuration passing controller and performance checks, while SteamOS itself is listed as compatible. That’s an important distinction because Steam Deck and Steam Machine compatibility clearly aren’t telling the same story here. On a capable gaming PC or current-generation console, the experience is much closer to what Frogwares clearly intended. So if you’re playing on stronger hardware, the technical concerns become much less of a deal-breaker, whereas Steam Deck owners should probably wait for further optimization and stability improvements.

Ultimately, The Sinking City 2 is a good survival-horror game that occasionally threatens to become a great one. Frogwares deserves credit for taking a substantial gamble with the sequel’s formula, because the move away from open-world detective work toward focused survival horror gives the series a sharper identity. Its Lovecraftian atmosphere, clever puzzles, memorable environments, improved combat, and oppressive sound design make the best sections genuinely creepy, while the weaker combat encounters, limited enemy variety, rushed ending, and uneven technical performance keep it from reaching the genre’s upper echelon. The Steam Deck situation is particularly frustrating because the game feels like something that should be perfect for handheld horror sessions, yet its current Unplayable designation and crashing issues make that recommendation a hard pass for now. If you’re playing on a Steam Machine, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, or a capable gaming PC, however, you’re getting a considerably more appealing version of the drowned nightmare.

---

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.