Frogwares Bets Big on Survival Horror and The Sinking City 2 Pays Off

The Sinking City 2 launched on August 18, 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S with a 79 Metascore and Steam’s Very Positive tag after Frogwares rebuilt its combat systems and committed fully to survival horror. Seven hours into the campaign, Eurogamer’s Matt Wales already called the gamble “definitely winning me over.”

Ukrainian studio Frogwares, long known for Sherlock Holmes adventures and the 2019 open-world detective game The Sinking City, dropped most of the deduction loop. What remains is scarce ammo, tight inventory, skittish monsters and a flooded Arkham that feels closer to modern Resident Evil than cosmic mystery tourism.

The detective studio walked away from its own formula

The original Sinking City scored a mixed 71 on Metacritic. Reviewers praised its atmosphere and clue-gathering but repeatedly flagged clumsy combat and technical issues. For the sequel Frogwares started over. New protagonist Calvin Rafferty, a paranormal gumshoe, searches Arkham for a way to wake his lover from an endless slumber after a ritual gone wrong trapped her soul in the Dreamlands.

Investigation still exists, but only as optional cases that unlock safer routes, supplies or weapon upgrades. They never gate the main path. The core loop is now resource management, environmental puzzles and third-person gunfights against worm-hosted corpses and Deep Ones.

That table captures the bet in plain numbers. Frogwares told Reddit users in a pre-launch AMA that the two games are essentially different genres and that the studio wanted to try its hand at survival horror.

Combat finally stops fighting the player

Early hours still frustrate. Spaces feel confined, rear ambushes arrive without warning, and the health indicator’s pulsing red border never lets up when supplies run low. Wales noted the systems feel “a little overzealous in its hobbling.”

Then the rhythms click. Focus aiming, a stomp on downed enemies, a stumble-dodge, and weapon upgrades turn the skittish monsters into manageable threats rather than bullet sponges. Ammo stays scarce enough that every shot carries weight. Inventory space forces hard choices between health, crafting parts and the next key or fuse.

• Worm-reanimated corpses that lurch, dash around corners and fling themselves forward
• Scurrying spidery horrors that punish spray-and-pray play
• Deep Ones rising from the floodwaters
• Optional investigation rewards that let players return better armed

Critics across OpenCritic’s 81 average (roughly 70 percent recommend) keep returning to the same point: the gunplay is no longer the weak link. It is responsive enough to carry the tension the genre demands. One early set-piece even sends the player charging through a burning building toward a half-dead neon sign that still flashes “RUN.”

Arkham looks and feels like a place people fled

The city itself is the other half of the sell. From the first skyline view of 1920s billboards, brownstones, raised railways and New England spires, the game sells period detail hard: vacuum-tube radios, art-deco lobbies, hinge-bonnet cars, half-submerged trams. Players travel by foot and small boat. Routes wind unexpectedly from a bar into a fire station, a graveyard into a printing house, then up a fire escape into neighbouring buildings.

World-building arrives through notes, environmental tableaus and item flavour text that sketch the people who left and the few who stayed. A crumbling art-deco hotel and a labyrinthine hospital later open the map and let the mood deepen. Frogwares leans into the pulpier side of Lovecraft: a brief church encounter with an elder god and hooded worshippers plays as cosmic silliness rather than pure cosmic dread. Weird Tales-style radio broadcasts, delivered in a voice that channels David Lynch, keep the tone playful even as the flood rises.

It’s a world full of period flourishes… and because it’s a city in the grip of cosmic forces, there’s room for stranger sights too.

Matt Wales wrote that after the hands-on. The standalone story set in flooded 1920s Arkham keeps the stakes personal: save one woman while an entire city drowns under eldritch pressure.

Built while the sirens kept sounding

An intro screen records 85,183 air-raid sirens across Ukrainian cities at the time of writing and simply states that work continued. The Guardian’s review found X-rays of real combat injuries pinned inside a prosthetics lab, each note describing limbs lost to mines or shell fire. Those details sit beside the pulp horror without turning the game into allegory.

Frogwares ran a Kickstarter campaign that funded wartime development after power cuts, relocations and team members entering military service. CEO Wael Amr described the campaign as a financial safety net for a bigger, more complex game. The studio that kept shipping through air raids is the same one that chose to reinvent its core loop rather than iterate on the first game’s mixed reception.

That context turns the genre bet into something sharper. A studio under real existential pressure chose the higher-risk mechanical path and still delivered a game that feels assured after its opening wobble.

Day-one numbers and the fan split

Metacritic sits at 79 from 35 critic reviews (77 percent positive). OpenCritic averages 81. On Steam the Steam page lists Very Positive reviews at 92 percent from the first 314 user scores. Preview outlets including Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer had already flagged the shift as genuinely unsettling and potentially rivaling Resident Evil and Silent Hill in the Cthulhu space.

Not every voice is sold. Some players on X and Reddit call the sequel a generic third-person horror shooter that abandoned the investigative identity that made the first game distinct. Combat still draws complaints about clunkiness or forced encounters from a minority. Others treat the Ukraine background as extra reason to back the title. The split is real, yet the aggregate scores sit comfortably above the original and well inside “generally favorable” territory.

What the studio gave up to get here

The lighter puzzles and reduced deduction remove the open-ended detective pleasure of the first game. Early progression can feel linear until larger spaces unlock. Crafting registers as somewhat superfluous. Romance dialogue and voice work draw occasional stiff notes. These are the costs of the pivot.

In exchange players get responsive gunplay that finally matches the studio’s ambition, a city dense with melancholy detail, and a tone that mixes genuine scares with pulp fun. The game also sits in a commercial lane already proven by Capcom’s own survival-horror sales engine. Frogwares is no longer the detective specialist dabbling in horror. It is a horror studio that still knows how to plant a clue.

Wales closed his hands-on by calling the departure “boldly assured.” Early critical and player response largely agrees. The bet that looked reckless on paper now looks like the move that let a wartime studio find a clearer voice.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did The Sinking City 2 release and on which platforms?

The game launched worldwide on August 18, 2026 for Windows PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S as a single-player title built in Unreal Engine 5. No Nintendo Switch or last-gen versions were announced at launch.

How does The Sinking City 2 differ from the 2019 original?

The sequel replaces the original’s open-world case-solving focus with linear-to-semi-open survival horror. Combat is now central and rebuilt, inventory and ammo are deliberately scarce, and investigation is optional rather than required. The setting moves from Oakmont to Arkham and the story is standalone.

Is combat better than in the first Sinking City?

Most day-one reviews say yes. Focus aiming, stomp finishers and dodge tools feel responsive, and enemy designs force careful shot placement. Scarcity of ammo and health keeps tension high, though some players still find early encounters punishing or spaces too tight.

Does the game still have detective or investigation elements?

Yes, but they are optional. Players can solve glyph sequences, padlock codes and optional cases for lore, shortcuts, supplies and weapon upgrades. None of them block main-story progress, which is a deliberate design choice by Frogwares.

How did the war in Ukraine affect development?

Frogwares continued work through thousands of air-raid sirens, power outages and team displacements. A 2025 Kickstarter provided a financial buffer. The finished game opens with a direct acknowledgment of the sirens and includes environmental details drawn from real combat injuries without turning the narrative into direct allegory.

The flooded streets of Arkham are open. Whether the studio stays in survival horror or circles back to pure detection is the next question only Frogwares can answer.