Although I haven’t played 2019’s horror detective game The Sinking City yet, I love games inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, so I was excited to get the opportunity to try a preview build of the upcoming The Sinking City 2. Set in the flooded city of Arkham, The Sinking City 2 is a standalone sequel that takes a step back from the detective-oriented gameplay of its predecessor to focus on survival horror. The story follows Calvin, who lost the woman he loves in an occult ritual and is now searching for a way to restore her.
For my preview, I got to play through two sections of the game. The first takes place near the start of the game, beginning in the Annex of Miskatonic University. From there, you head out into the flooded streets. Since the supernatural flood now dominates the city, you can’t explore freely but instead use a boat to traverse the waters and disembark at piers to access different sections. It’s intended to be a semi-open world, and from the preview, it’s easy to imagine how more areas might open up over time, especially since you pass some locked doors that can’t be opened yet. The focal point of the preview is an investigation in a church, which will be optional in the full game but provides a nice slice of combat and puzzle-solving as you gather the necessary items and pick up clues about how to use them.
It’s not all about puzzles, however. Dangerous threats lurk in the streets of Arkham, from zombie-like humanoid enemies with weak points you can shoot to smaller monsters that like to spring at you from a distance. Combat is handled through over-the-shoulder shooting controls, as well as a limited melee attack you can use. There are also traps you can lure enemies into, but I found that to be less effective than the other options. Throughout my preview, the enemies were dangerous enough to keep me on my toes and make sure I never felt too overpowered, without being overwhelming.
The second part of the preview takes place later in the game, as you investigate Akeley Hospital. This is a more self-contained area, with a darker atmosphere than the earlier church section and a persistent sense of danger. It also has a clear survival horror structure as you explore different rooms and search for ways to proceed. A number of locked doors early on block off sections of the hospital until you find the twisted item you need to bypass them: the face of a nurse who worked there, carefully preserved. While the preview only covers part of the hospital section, it’s enough to feel it start to open up as you explore. That structure of finding items and using them to unlock new places, gradually expanding the explorable area, is the first thing I look for in a survival horror game, so I was delighted to see it so clearly.
The Sinking City 2 also uses my favorite type of map system for this sort of game, where rooms on the map are marked in red if there are still items to collect and turn blue once you’ve gotten everything. There’s plenty to find, such as items that can be crafted into healing items or ammo, key items you’ll need for puzzles, and lore documents that expand on the world. You have limited inventory space, with a storage box in safe rooms, and it feels like the game has a good grasp on inventory management. Occasionally, I had to run back to the safe room to deposit or retrieve items, but not to the point where it got frustrating.
Safe rooms are useful havens for other reasons, as well. Manual saves in these safe rooms are the primary way you record your progress, although the game does auto-save at key points. The safe room is also where you use “dream essence” to unlock and equip talents for passive benefits, such as increasing the speed at which you reload weapons. Since only a few of these perks can be equipped, it looks like it will be a good way to strengthen yourself without becoming overpowered.
Now, let’s talk about the puzzles. The handful of puzzles I encountered in the preview build feel good, from the traditional puzzles of unlocking new paths with key items to the more in-depth puzzle at the church. Puzzles like that are how The Sinking City 2 retains some of the detective gameplay that was more prominent in the first game, as you must find clues to learn how to proceed. Once you have clues, you can place them on your investigation screen and connect them. This is for more than just organizing your own thoughts, however. Whenever I completed a set of clues, I was rewarded with dream essence, which made me eager to map everything out as well as solve the puzzles themselves.
Overall, I enjoyed my look at The Sinking City 2. It has a good atmosphere and a promising survival horror structure, and I’m interested to see how it will go from there when the full game comes out later this year.
