The Sinking City 2 Has Promise, But Still Needs to Prove Itself [Hands-On Preview]

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In 2026, a new Lovecraftian survival horror game, The Sinking City 2, will be released. It’s a sequel to the original The Sinking City from 2019, which recently gained renewed popularity with a 2025 remaster. If you’re playing the first game now to prepare for the sequel, you might notice some significant changes. After playing it recently, it’s clear the new game is quite different from the original, and whether those changes are good or bad is up for debate.

I recently got to play an early version of The Sinking City 2 thanks to TopMob, and it was a pretty substantial demo – about an hour and a half of solid gameplay. The game is split into two areas that feel like semi-open worlds. Honestly, I’m walking away with mixed feelings. While it definitely has potential, it sometimes feels like a step back for Frogwares. It leans into a lot of the typical survival-horror stuff we’ve seen lately, and I’m worried that might lose what makes their games so unique and interesting.

While my time with The Sinking City 2 had some good moments, I’m starting to have some concerns. We’ve recently had a lot of excellent and original survival horror games, like Resident Evil Requiem and Cronos: The New Dawn. If The Sinking City 2 wants to be considered among the best, it will need to significantly improve to stand out.

The Sinking City 2 Is Much More Action-Oriented Than the First Game

Frogwares has stated they wanted to make The Sinking City 2 more focused on action, but I was still surprised by how much combat was in the preview I played. The beginning of the demo took place in the flooded city of Arkham, and I spent roughly equal time fighting and exploring. However, even the exploration felt connected to combat, since the most useful items I found—like health recovery and ammo—helped me in fights. There were a few environmental puzzles, but the core gameplay revolved around battling enemies.

The gameplay feels similar to recent Resident Evil games. Like those titles, you generally follow a straightforward path with occasional diversions, always focused on a clear goal. This design creates a more focused and carefully paced experience, which really benefits the horror elements. I saw this in The Sinking City 2. The first game was a more open adventure with large areas and friendly characters to interact with, but Sinking City 2 seems to prioritize isolation and building tension. I often found myself in narrow spaces, getting surprised by monsters, and having to quickly adapt with limited resources.

The game largely follows the typical survival horror formula, and I have mixed feelings about how it was executed. While it was genuinely scarier than the first game at times, and the increased action and combat made the gameplay more exciting, the combat itself wasn’t very compelling. Enemies had obvious, exaggerated weak points, making fights feel too easy and routine. The shooting wasn’t particularly impressive either, sometimes even feeling old-fashioned. The first game’s combat wasn’t great, but because this sequel relies on it more heavily, those weaknesses are more noticeable.

The Sinking City 2’s Puzzle-Solving Is Great

While the combat in The Sinking City 2 felt uninspired and borrowed from other games, the puzzles and investigations were a different story. Like the original Sinking City and Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes games, this game actually made me think. For example, one puzzle in the Arkham streets area required me to piece together clues – a note about strange creatures, another about symbols connected to them, and a third about a weird machine. I had to keep track of a lot of information, and even used a pen and paper to solve it. It wasn’t overly complicated, but it was refreshing to have to use logic and reasoning. Too often, puzzles in survival horror games just involve finding the correct item or place, without any real mental challenge.

From what I’ve played, The Sinking City 2 has removed the brightly colored vision mode from the first game, and I think that’s a good change. It makes you pay closer attention to the environment to find clues.

The puzzle-solving that was so promising at the beginning took a backseat later in the demo. I had hoped this part of the game would focus more on puzzles and investigation, but it ended up being mostly about fighting enemies and navigating scary environments. The gameplay became repetitive: fight, find an item to overcome an obstacle, and repeat. While there were still some logical puzzles involving documents, they felt like an extra addition rather than a core part of the experience. This section, set in a hospital, felt like a familiar survival horror scenario, but not as well done as in other games.

My Hopes Are Still High for The Sinking City 2

I’ve tried to talk about The Sinking City 2 as if it’s already released, because I don’t think the initial problems will define the whole game. It seems like whether the game is good will depend more on how all its different elements work together over the long run, rather than any single feature being perfect. For example, even if the shooting isn’t great, it won’t matter as much if the puzzles are consistently well-designed. I’m also eager to learn more about the story, as the demo only offered a brief glimpse. I know it’s about the protagonist trying to cure his lover’s coma, and I found out a few things the developers asked us to keep secret, but that’s all I can say for now. If the story really delivers, especially with its Lovecraftian themes, then The Sinking City 2 could still be a success, even if other parts aren’t amazing.

The Sinking City 2 is expected to launch in 2026. We at TopMob received an early, unfinished version of the game on PC to test and preview.

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2026-05-12 19:39