The Sinking City Review: Sinking Into My Heart

By ZD



    The Sinking City is an action adventure game developed by Frogwares and published by Bigben Interactive on Windows (PC), Xbox One, and PS4 in June 2019. It was self-published by Frogwares on Nintendo Switch in September 2019.

    Before working on this particular project, they were originally involved in the development of Call of Cthulhu being published by Focus Home Interactive though their reason for departure and starting their own take on a Cthulhu inspired game is unclear. Regardless of the reason, in my opinion, they certainly made the better game of the two. It's a shame that the game has since been delisted (and physical copy production halted) on several platforms due to a falling out and agreement breach by Bigben Interactive towards Frogwares. I believe the Switch version, since that was self-published and a DRM PC version that can be bought through Frogwares directly are the only versions available for the time being. But if you are remotely interested and have an opportunity to grab the game, the following review will suggest whether or not you should depending on what type of games you are into.

    The year is 1920, you assume the role of Charles Reed, a former member of the navy gone private investigator. You start to have odd, hyper realistic feeling dreams which you wish to look into the cause of and find yourself in the city of Oakmont, Massachusetts following the lead of someone who claims to have an idea of the source of your problems. When you arrive you meet a man (with an ape-like appearance which he explains should you choose to ask him) named Robert Throgmorton. Unfortunately, I can't cover too much of the narrative because the moment to moment events are important to the over all plot and contains a lot of spoilers.

    The second you arrive in Oakmont, things get weird immediately both intentionally and mechanically (unintentionally) beyond your seemingly supernatural detective powers you will use to progress through challenges within the game. The game feels simultaneously like an indie title and AAA title had a baby and that's really hard to explain until you try playing the game. The characters you run into you will find are extremely helpful or unhelpful depending on their intentions, but they are certainly equal parts weird. 

    One thing that helps the game when it starts mechanically failing, is that since it is a Cthulhu game and many things are purposefully weird, it doesn't seem entirely out of place when you encounter an NPC who is just crying for no reason or clearly supposed to be talking to another NPC that probably wasn't programmed in there. There will be NPCs in the most barren or oddest of places, even at times that it is implied you should be discreet but can't help but have people in the background.

    The game is fairly linear for the most part with a few side quests sprinkled throughout which can get you additional resources, weapons, or outfits if you choose to do them. You won't find yourself getting lost too easily, because I typically do and it didn't happen too often in this game, but there are a couple of obscure parts that you may need to Google how to do. One of the most severe problems that happened and it is why I always have multiple backup saves, is in a level that checkpointed behind me the boss did not load in and I ran around in a seemingly empty area (with no exit) trying to figure out what to do to progress until I decided to reload and discovered it was supposed to be a boss fight.


    Potential spoiler warning. Very minor at most, but be warned. At the beginning screens when you first turn on the game, it warns you that there is some pretty racist stuff in the game since H.P. Lovecraft was a very racist guy and to proceed with caution if you may be sensitive to such subject matter. As you go throughout the game you quickly realize the racial tension they are talking about are between the Innsmouthers (fish-like folk) and the residents of Oakmont. This is all presented in standard faire with no delusions of comparison between actual race wars unlike Detroit: Become Human, until you encounter a section in the game where you are informed and shown (via your detective powers that allow you to witness scenes you weren't there for) that the Ku Klux Klan is behind a lot of the hate crimes being caused throughout the city against the Innsmouthers and all this seems to be trying to make the racial injustices seem a bit more real by trying to tie it to a real life racist faction.

    Aside these things, I found a lot of the weirdness of the game (both by design and not) charming. It is not Deadly Premonition in how masterfully this was executed, but the brokenness of the game did have its own charm to it and it didn't deter me from enjoying the game, though I can not say that everyone will feel this way and I can understand if this turns you off and you abandon the game permanently. Because of this I can't, in good faith, whole heartedly recommend this game to just anyone but I really enjoyed it and thought it was a great game despite its short comings.


Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

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