The Sinking City 2 Review – Resident Evil Meets Lovecraftian Terror

When Frogwares released the original The Sinking City back in 2019, it was an ambitious, sprawling open-world detective adventure set in the flooded streets of fictionalized Oakmont. It had grand ideas, but its detective mechanics often struggled under the weight of an oversized map and awkward combat. Fast forward to 2026, and the Ukrainian developer has returned to the cosmic horror well with The Sinking City 2.

This time, the developer has stripped away the open-world filler and shifted genres entirely. The result is a much tighter, semi-open survival horror experience heavily inspired by Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It is a bold, focused reinvention that trades vast distances for oppressive atmosphere and genuine tension, delivering a compelling experience that kept me on the edge, although sometimes frustrated, until the very end.

Beyond the Veil: Calvin and Faye’s Desperate Quest

Set in a flooded 1920s Arkham, Massachusetts, The Sinking City 2 introduces a fresh narrative and a new pair of leads. You play as Calvin Rafferty, a typical Indiana Jones style occult adventurer who is capable, wisecracking, and eager for answers. Beside him is his sharp, no-nonsense partner, Faye Bennett, who is all business and even more capable until she is struck down with a mysterious illness.

The game kicks off after a disastrous ritual beyond the veil goes sideways, leaving Faye trapped in a supernatural, twilight coma. Desperate to revive her, Calvin researches a restoration ritual to bring her back and dives headfirst into Arkham’s ruined districts, including Miskatonic University, St. Mary’s Hospital, and the Devil’s Reef Hotel.

As the ever-present Slither, a plague of parasitic, eldritch worms, takes a more violent turn by possessing bodies and flinging them at Calvin, his search for components becomes a fight for survival. What makes the journey particularly interesting is how Faye remains a presence throughout the adventure, anchoring Calvin’s path through the madness as he seeks to wake her.

Classic Survival Horror and the Crafting Conundrum

The core gameplay loop embraces traditional survival horror principles that keep the action moving, but bring in some challenges with inventory and backtracking fatigue.

• Infiltrate & Scavenge: Enter flooded, claustrophobic districts like Aley Memorial Hospital or the Fish Market to search drawers and cabinets for limited resources while dealing with immediate threats.
• Establish Safe Spaces: Locate sanctuary rooms complete with save points, inventory stash boxes, and perk stations.
• Explore & Unlock: Solve environmental puzzles, hunt down themed keys, and unlock shortcuts to secure key paths forward.

Thankfully the game features an excellent map system that helps immensely by marking rooms in color-coded states and highlighting unclaimed items, unsolved puzzles, or unexamined mysteries. This dynamic map is a lifesaver, especially because storage space is so limited and The Sinking City 2 borrowed one of the worst Resident Evil tropes: forcing players to manually combine raw components to craft basic bullets or medical supplies.

As you progress through the game, your arsenal expands from a standard handgun to a shotgun, submachine gun, and rifle. Each firearm utilizes its own specific ammo type and requires distinct crafting parts to build more rounds, which compounds your inventory woes immensely.

To mitigate this grid squeeze, you can hunt down rare lockboxes scattered across Arkham that grant permanent inventory space expansions, though opening them requires finding hidden keys first. I genuinely appreciate the classic survival mechanic and the tension of limited ammo; the friction simply lies in the tedious crafting clutter while actively wrestling with grid space.

To make matters stranger, certain major boss arenas feature infinitely respawning loot pickups that the game cheekily explains via in-game notes about their “bizarre physical properties,” completely undercutting the resource scarcity established during general exploration.

Combat Stress, Progression, and Eldritch Puzzles

Regardless of the inventory headaches, the safe rooms are a sanctuary. They offer crucial save points, item storage, and an upgrade station to spend points on perks across four tiers that become increasingly powerful as higher tiers are discovered. The game dispenses clues and lore during exploration, and linking these written notes together on a detective-style “mind map” using red string rewards you with Dream Essence to spend on talent points across various playstyles. You can also find and equip weapon attachments, like focus-aim modifiers or critical-hit barrels, to add extra punch to your firearms.

Combat itself is often stressful, with fast enemies scampering through tight corridors or hordes of animated corpses swarming Calvin as he explores in environments that grow progressively more dangerous and hostile over time. What works particularly well is how Frogwares reimagined enemy weak points: rather than relying on traditional headshots, the parasitic Slither creates pulsating, pus-filled mounds on enemy limbs and torsos. This forces players to utilize a Resident Evil-style focus aim system, where standing still narrows your crosshairs for precision strikes.

It became clear a little too late in my playthrough that everything does not need to be killed; learning to dodge, time punches, stomp downed foes, and just avoiding encounters is essential when resources are so scarce. Playing on Normal difficulty can be very tough, and missing a save between exploration runs can result in harsh setbacks.

Still, the drive to see what dark paths Calvin and Faye would encounter kept me pushing forward, supported by delightfully bizarre and grim environmental puzzles. Tasks range from deciphering occult symbols to charge magical devices, to surreal encounters with talking brains in jars, hoisting a massive dead whale out of the water, and harvesting intact faces from dead facility staff members to bypass biometric security doors.

Visuals, Audio, and a Moving Dev Tribute

Visually, The Sinking City 2 boasts a great visual style with enemies that are suitably gory, creepy, and paired with plenty of surprise encounters and evolving enemy types over time. The voice acting is capable and the overall presentation looks quite good, but what makes the achievement even more remarkable is knowing the context behind its creation.

Built by a Ukrainian team who continued development while their country was under active invasion, the game carries a deeply personal impact. In a touching moment within a laboratory section, players can examine a set of X-ray lightboxes that tell the real stories of people close to the development team who fought and lost their lives in the war. It is a somber, deeply human moment embedded within a dark game.

The Verdict

The Sinking City 2 sets a new, far more focused path from the original game, bringing together key survival horror elements to deliver a solid, memorable experience.

We were given a Steam key for review purposes Keymailer and The Sinking City 2 is available right now on PC via Steam.