Of course, the ongoing invasion of Ukraine has also played a part in the delay (with days of power loss due to drone and missile strikes, among other issues), alongside the shift to a survival horror format. As lead game designer, Alexander Gresko explained, “Switching to survival horror for the first time has been a whole new kind of challenge for us in itself, too.

“We’ve been making investigation adventures for more than twenty years, but survival horror asks for a completely different kind of design thinking. Tension, pacing, combat, etc. We’ve always loved the genre as fans, but once you start building it yourself, you realize how much you still have to do. It’s exciting, but it definitely makes development slower.”

Even with the delay, Frogwares isn’t committing to a firm date, as head of publishing Sergi Oganesyan said the studio would rather “be certain than announce something now only to move it again. Rest assured, we’re currently aiming for the first half of 2026, so it’s a matter of months, not years.”

On the bright side, it will showcase a “lot more gameplay” in the coming months, per senior social media manager Anna Bieniek, with 13 new screenshots available. Check them out below.

The Sinking City 2 is currently in its final stages of production and is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Developed on Unreal Engine 5, it unfolds in the flooded city of Arkham in the 1920s and once again borrows from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Learn more about its gameplay here.

The Sinking City Remastered is definitely a demanding game in terms of the raw horsepower required to max out its visual effects. On my system – an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32 GB of GDDR5 RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT – I was obviously not able to max out the graphics while still hanging on to a reasonable frame rate. With everything cranked to its highest and FSR set to native anti-aliasing, the game would crawl along at between 30 and 40 FPS. However, just the act of switching FSR to Quality mode and disabling ray tracing instantly doubled my frame rates.

"Overall atmosphere and the investigative gameplay is one department where The Sinking City didn’t really need much in the way of improvements, and the remastered release makes this clear by making minimal changes in this regard."

The higher-resolution textures, as well as support for modern features like FSR/DLSS – depending on your graphics card – as well as frame generation means that The Sinking City Remastered can certainly have moments where it looks absolutely gorgeous.

However, there are still some places where the game can look quite rough. Characters, for example, are expertly modelled and animated, especially in conversations. However, just about every instance of facial hair on a character ends up looking like a cartoonish mess of coloured blobs. This is despite the fact that some of the smaller nuances of a character’s model tends to have had great attention paid to it. A perfect example is protagonist Charles Reed, whose eyes are red because he hasn’t been able to get a proper night’s sleep for quite some time. This is communicated purely through visual storyetlling, and never gets brought up in a bout of exposition-laden dialogue.

Overall atmosphere and the investigative gameplay is one department where The Sinking City didn’t really need much in the way of improvements, and the remastered release makes this clear by making minimal changes in this regard. The city of Oakmont remains one of the most interesting takes on a world inspired by the horror stylings of H. P. Lovecraft, melding together elements from several of his stories into one larger tableau that is an absolute joy to explore.

"The Sinking City Remastered can certainly have moments where it looks absolutely gorgeous."

The setup to the story is about as Lovecraftian as you can get; private investigator Charles Reed is drawn to the city of Oakmont because of repeated nightmares he has been having where he starts hearing strange voices calling him to the depths as his ship is stranded in some sort of limbo between the ocean and the sky, while a gigantic leviathan floats overhead.

Things don’t get much easier for Reed once he lands at Oakmont, however. Outsiders aren’t really trusted much in the city, which happens to have its own problems with water levels rising, strange monstrous creatures showing up, and the Grand Families taking part in their own political machinations. Reed is able to discover that many at Oakmont are seemingly having the same nightmares and visions as him, which culminates in him getting his major case: figure out what happened to an expedition that was exploring the connection between the flood that ruined much of Oakmont, and the visions that many are having.

It’s a fairly classic Lovecraftian setup and leans in quite hard on what has essentially become Frogwares’ forte at this point: investigative gameplay. As Reed, you have to take on cases, find clues, and figure out what’s happening. To help you with this, Reed is equipped with a supernatural ability called the Mind’s Eye, This ability lets him him track more mundane things, like the trail of someone that was running away, as well as more complex things, like giving Reed the ability to recreate scenes from the past that he must put together in chronological order.

"It’s a fairly classic Lovecraftian setup and leans in quite hard on what has essentially become Frogwares’ forte at this point: investigative gameplay."

The investigative aspects of The Sinking City Remastered are the parts that shine the brightest in what ends up feeling like an otherwise dull gem. Much like a real-world private investigator would have to do, Reed will need to find clues at the local newspaper’s archives, talk to the police to try and get access to their records, talk to witnesses, discover smaller clues, and ultimately connect all the dots in his head to get a clear picture of what’s going on.

While investigations can often feel like intricate puzzles that are really fun to solve, the other main part of the gameplay in The Sinking City Remastered – the combat – still feels like it shouldn’t have been there at all. Every now and then, you’ll have to get into a fight, be it against other people, or more commonly, against otherworldly horrors that can eat up your sanity just as quickly as they eat up your health. To take them on, Reed can get his hands on a number of weapons, from a simple pistol to start out with, all the way up to a rifle, a shotgun, and a submachine gun.

While the controls don’t quite feel as janky and awkward as they did in the game’s original 2019 release, the changes made in the remastered version don’t really help justify their presence in the game much anyway. Combat encounters can swing wildly in difficulty, where some feel like they were simple point-and-click affairs that were only there to eat into your precious piles of ammo, or incredibly difficult fights where your enemies end up feeling like bullet sponges.

"The investigative aspects of The Sinking City Remastered are the parts that shine the brightest in what ends up feeling like an otherwise dull gem."

The unfortunate thing is that the combat often tends to interrupt some of the more fun parts of The Sinking City Remastered, and it tends to be a bit of a pace killer when you’re hot on the trail of a suspect but have to be distracted by this strange creature that you either have to kill, or sneak around while hoping that it doesn’t see you. The game manages to keep its creepy, tense atmosphere just fine most of the time, and combat feels like a completely unnecessary addition to the game.

The progression system feels similarly unnecessary. As Reed continues his investigations, he will inevitably earn experience points, which eventually translate into Knowledge Points that can be used up on unlocking new passive abilities. These tend to be fairly simple, like giving Reed more health, the ability to carry more bullets, or flat damage increases for some weapons. The lack of anything that might aid the investigative gameplay stops the progression system from feeling like it was a natural addition to the game. Rather, it feels incredibly tacked on.

The Sinking City Remastered fixes quite a few of the issues we had with the original release; most of the visuals have been improved by leaps and bounds over what we last saw in 2019, and the overall movement and combat doesn’t feel nearly as awkward as it used to. However, there are still places where the game lacks some polish, be it the awkward facial hair on characters, or the completely unnecessary combat and stealth sequences. Despite this, however, The Sinking City Remastered is once again one of the better games out there that manages to tackle the horror themes of H. P. Lovecraft.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Developed on Unreal Engine 5, the remaster includes enhanced environments with more details and objects, a full lighting overhaul, reflection improvements and 4K textures. Upscalers like Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR are also supported alongside Temporal Super Resolution. You can also leverage the new Photo Mode for screenshots.

Of course, those who own the original on previous-gen consoles and PC can upgrade to the remaster for free. As for the future, The Sinking City 2 is in development, and Frogwares has plans for the franchise. In a press release, publishing director Sergiy Oganesyan said, “We plan to do big things with The Sinking City, starting with the sequel and then beyond.

“So, after our rather well-known struggles with the original, it feels amazing to have this positive moment be part of the game’s twisted history and for us to be the ones to fully decide it. Making it free to all our existing fans is our way of giving back to them for having supported us all this time through thick and thin.”

The Sinking City was first launched in 2019 and focuses on private investigator Charles W. Reed, who suffers from disturbing nightmares. He arrives in Oakmont to unravel their meaning and is caught up in a plot involving the Great Old Ones. Check out our review of the original here.

A trailer isn’t available, but you can check out various screenshots below. On top of all the benefits from the jump to Unreal Engine 5, The Sinking City Remastered will feature “enhanced” locations with more details and objects, 4K textures, better reflections, and support for DLSS, FSR and TSR. And, of course, there’s a Photo Mode to help players capture all this beauty.

There’s no release date, but stay tuned for official gameplay of the remaster in the coming months. As for The Sinking City 2, it has four days remaining on its Kickstarter and amassed nearly $473,000 in crowd-funding, over four times the original goal.

A full-fledged survival horror title unlike its sequel, The Sinking City 2 is set in the decrepit, flooded, and abandoned streets of the Lovecraftian city of Arkham. The gameplay trailer, which is under a minute long, showcases glimpses of a variety of enemy types, combat gameplay footage, investigations, and more. 

Further details are revealed on each of those aspects in a longer and much more detailed developer diary, which also dives into the game’s usage of Unreal Engine 5, and how the engine’s tech has enabled Frogwares to develop a more visually compelling experience. Check out both videos below.

The Sinking City 2 is due out sometime this year for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. 

Based on the images, backers who pledge enough for the latter will receive a SteelBook, a collector’s box, a figure, what appears to be a vinyl record, a hardcover art book, stickers, a medallion, and more. There’s even some art of Cthulhu with a rubber ducky in the bath.

Frogwares also promises “exclusive first looks at new environments, creatures, and gameplay features” during development. Fans can also participate in challenges and community events for “hidden secrets” before launch.

The Sinking City 2 is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC in 2025. While exploration and battling cosmic horrors like the Deep Ones is the name of the game, you’ll also investigate and gather clues. It’s developed on Unreal Engine 5, utilizing MetaHuman, Lumen GI, and more.

According to a statement by the studio, old saves won’t be compatible with the new version of the game due to technical reasons. The Steam version of the game does allow players to play an older version of The Sinking City, however. This older version will only be available until February 28.

The announcement comes on the heels of a lengthy legal battle between Frogwares and former publisher of the PC version, Nacon. Going through a fair bit of problems during the lawsuit, The Sinking City was pulled from some platforms back in 2020. Nacon, however, made the game available in 2021, with Frogwares urging players to not purchase it, referring to it as a pirated version.

The Sinking City is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details on the game, which was originally released back in 2020, check out our review.

Folks, we got some big news!

Frogwares is now the sole publisher of The Sinking City on all platforms! We're happy to finally put this whole thing behind us, and we look forward to sharing more news about the future of the franchise very soon.

Please read our full statement pic.twitter.com/IxWblqbYmP

— The Sinking City 2 (@thesinkingcity) January 2, 2024

After the war started, the team found “solace inside the story of Sherlock Holmes The Awakened. A story of one man bent on bringing otherworldly horror to the rest of the world (and who says that art doesn’t imitate life?). Creating this game for you, our fans, kept us going through tough times.” With the project wrapped, Frogwares is now moving on to its “next dream game project,” though we’ll learn more “at the right time.”

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch. It’s a remake of the developer’s 2007 horror mystery, which sees Holmes and Watson investigating mysterious disappearances. Eventually, they come into contact with the Cthulhu Mythos, and the famous detective’s sanity begins to wane (which factors into the new mechanics).

In addition to modernized graphics and animations, the remake sports more story content and side missions. Check out our official review for more details. As for Frogwares’ next project, stay tuned for further updates.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is what you get when you blend a Lovecraftian story with, well, a Sherlock Holmes mystery. That is, in a nutshell, the elevator pitch here, and it’s one that the game pulls off rather well. Starting out in fairly grounded manner and setting off the famous duo of Holmes and Watson on what ordinarily seems like an intriguing but relatively ordinary kidnapping case, the game’s story eventually unveils that there’s much more going on. The story grows increasingly bizarre and cerebral, and the mystery soon becomes intertwined with gothic horror, eldritch monstrosities, and our heroes losing a grip on their sanity.

"The stop-start pacing of the gameplay can often hamper the momentum of the central mystery in rather frustrating ways, but while that definitely does impact the enjoyment of the story, that core premise does enough to make you want to keep going."

It’s not what you’d expect from a Sherlock Holmes story, but The Awakened manages that blend pretty well. The stop-start pacing of the gameplay can often hamper the momentum of the central mystery in rather frustrating ways, but while that definitely does impact the enjoyment of the story, that core premise does enough to make you want to keep going. That said, it has to be said that the game doesn’t exactly set new standards where its fairly ordinary portrayals of the leading duo of Holmes and Watson are concerned. Instead, the fun definitely comes from the core premise of dropping those characters in a very unfamiliar situation.

Where The Awakened falters the most, unfortunately, is with its gameplay and investigation mechanics, primarily due to how obtuse the game can often be. Investigations have often been a core gameplay component in many of Frogwares’ games, and the developer does like to remain as hands-off as possible in that area, but The Awakened tends to offer so little in the way of guidance and pointers that often, even figuring out what it wants you to do can be an exercise in patience.

It doesn’t help that parsing important information from everything that the UI dumps on you is far easier said than done- every single clue and observation you collect is collated into a single menu screen, and when you have multiple cases and investigations going at the same time, it can be hard to keep track of which clue pertains to which investigation, and what you’re supposed to do to follow up on it. A cleaner UI that perhaps did a better job of indicating that kind of information would have made things far smoother, as would the game offering at least vague suggestions of what you’re supposed to do to advance a particular quest or investigation.

"Investigations have often been a core gameplay component in many of Frogwares’ games, and the developer does like to remain as hands-off as possible in that area, but The Awakened tends to offer so little in the way of guidance and pointers that often, even figuring out what it wants you to do can be an exercise in patience."

When you do piece clues together in investigations and arrive at final conclusions and findings, it can be pretty fun to watch the game visualize that, with Holmes narrating events step by step based on your findings and the conclusions you’ve drawn from them. Other aspects of investigations, however, can be a bit too dull, or feel too much like unnecessary trial and error without little to no consequences. For instance, when you’re in the mind palace and are connecting clues, it feels like cursory trial and error with very little actual calculative investigative work taking place. In conversations, meanwhile, presenting evidence to NPCs to gain new information also ends up feeling little more than crossing items off a checklist.

All of this is set in the context of semi-open world levels, with each chapter of the game being set in a new map. Locations vary in size and can have plenty going on, including optional missions or other quests that might tie into each other in certain ways. However, the majority of your time is spent going from place to place and engaging in the aforementioned aspects of gameplay- conversations with NPCs, investigating scenes and locations, and piecing together clues. Often, that’s fun- but just as often, it feels tedious. Navigating the areas is also often an inconsistent experience- while some of them can be quite visually intriguing (especially later on in the game), others feel less so. The map being surprisingly uninformative, meanwhile, is not only yet another example of the game’s lackluster UI, it also makes it hard to get around areas themselves, which tend to be poorly signposted.

Given how meandering all of that makes the gameplay experience, the pacing definitely takes a hit in Sherlock: The Awakened. Between wrangling with the game’s obscurity and going from location to location to engage in mechanics that are often not that engaging, you may very find yourself frequently left frustrated at not being able to make progress in the story- which is the part of the game that is the most appealing and consistently engaging.

"Frogwares’ titles have never looked like graphical beasts, and The Awakened definitely has that in common with them. It is, of course, a major upgrade over the 2007 original, but there’s still plenty of rough edges here, from characters’ faces looking like they’re made out of clay to bland textures and lacking details to wonky animations and more."

On a visual and technical level, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is unlikely to surprise you in any way, especially if you’ve played a Frogwares game before. The studio’s titles have never looked like graphical beasts, and The Awakened definitely has that in common with them. It is, of course, a major upgrade over the 2007 original, but there’s still plenty of rough edges here, from characters’ faces looking like they’re made out of clay to bland textures and lacking details to wonky animations and more. It also feels a little janky to play when it comes to things such as the movement and the controls- which, again, isn’t out of the ordinary for a game made by Frogwares. It is worth keeping in consideration, however, that the studio, which is based in Ukraine, has obviously been working in some very tough conditions while this game has been worked on- which, incidentally, is a period that spans just a single year.

It’s just a shame that so much of what Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is trying to do on the gameplay front doesn’t land. Though investigations can be satisfying when they finally come together, almost everything leading up to those moments of culmination and eureka is frequently dragged down by design that is either frustratingly opaque, repetitive, or unpolished. When the game does move at a steady pace and lets you enjoy the story and how effectively it blends Holmes with Cthulhu, it’s well worth experiencing. The problem is that it keeps stumbling over itself, all too often preventing itself from moving at the pace it needs to. If you can put up with those frustrations, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened otherwise has enough going for it that makes it worth experiencing.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened combines the classic investigation mechanics that you’d expect from one of Frogwares’ games based on the IP with a setting that’s teeming with plenty of eldritch horrors, insanity, and monstrosities. All of that and more is shown off in the trailer, with a particular focus on the investigations and the mind-twisting horrors that Holmes and Watson will be contending with.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is due out next week, on April 11, for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.