Ghosts of the past R’lyeh – review of the game “The Sinking City”

Mass production of alcoholic detectives continues

The game is based on the famous story Call of Cthulhu, so we start our adventure – of course – on the ship. Our hero, as in every game based on the works of Lovecraft, wakes up from a nightmare of cosmic and underwater abominations.

The character we play is (predictably) a private detective who has come to the city of Oakmont to solve the mystery of the visions plaguing him. Charles W. Reed is a wasted traveler and navy veteran with deep scars on his face and a sandpaper-colored voice: a classic and at the same time clichéd representative of a 1920s detective, however, Charles can surprise you with his sense of humor. The first time he “made a joke” was when I was tense and focused on carefully examining my surroundings, so I burst out laughing at the ambiguous comment he shared. Such moments happen infrequently, but have a positive impact on the humanization of characters.

The city is sinking, tolerance is lost

The sinking city – Oakmont, Massachusetts – has a fairly unique geographic position and does not appear on any of the maps. It is inhabited by extremely traditional citizens, unfriendly and intolerant of newcomers. Despite this, the inhabitants have fully accepted the existence of human-fish and human-gorilla hybrids.

Interestingly, the Innsmouthers are not the widely hated group in Oakmont, though the Throgmorton family dislikes them in particular. The local inhabitants show the greatest hatred towards the dark-skinned Kai believers – refugees from the floods who seek asylum in the sunken city. 

It is worth mentioning that every time we start the game – immediately after the warning about the possibility of an epilepsy attack – we are informed that The Sinking City contains intolerant and racist content. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone when I write that HP Lovecraft is one of the most racist authors. The creators of Sinking City decided to … warn or apologize to viewers, explaining that “it was like that in those days and they do not intend to ignore it.” 

The content the creators warn about mainly relates to the conflict between Innsmouthers (the Innsmouth Syndrome fishermen ) and Oakmont’s respected wealthy gorilla-human family, the Throgmortons. In the house of Robert – the head of the family – we can find, among others photo from the Ku Klux Klan meeting. Not nice.

Unfulfilled threats

The creators warned in almost every interview and announcements that the player would not be “led by the hand”. I must admit that I had serious concerns about whether I would be able to make any progress in the plot. It’s been a long time since I played a game that “does not lead the player by the hand” (I think it was Morrowind lately !), But I must say that The Sinking City surprised me.

I was expecting to have to run from box to box to see if I could open each one in turn. In fact – as I mentioned earlier – all items that we can interact with are marked. In addition, we are able to independently mark landmarks on the map, such as: “blocked path”, “danger!” or “secret treasure”, using special icons. We can even assign them to specific tasks in our casebook !

Cthulhu Swimming Simulator 

I must say that I expected more from the game’s visuals, which was released in 2019. The facial animation leaves a lot to be desired. It is a detective game – facial expressions should be the key element of the animation.

Sinking City resembles every previous game by Frogwares studio due to the fact that, like the famous Sherlock Holmes , the game was built on the Unreal engine. You can say that it refers to classic detective games with its artistic style, although we have seen it many times. In addition, as in virtually every game, there are also bugs here . For example, more than once when I was traveling on the canals by boat, this one suddenly sank. Two meters away, everything was fine – I did not scoop water, leeches did not attack me, I managed to turn and … I continued. 

Developers, when planning Oakmont, wanted to create an open world – a city – with an area of ​​2 km ² , so they decided to take an example, among others from the Assassin’s Creed series . When I think about the “open world”, I imagine that I will be able to look into most of the homes, warehouses and shops on the map. In practice, The Sinking City offers very few places that we can enter. 

Doors that can be walked through and chests that can be searched are marked with so-called a “hobo” sign, but for most of the game, a large number of such “stigmatized” houses are unavailable to the player.  

What if this city was … flooded?

I do not want to share only negative observations, so I would like to describe the process of creating a sinking city. To design Oakmont, architects were hired to create a city plan and a 3D map based on buildings from the 1920s, then individual districts were flooded by graphic designers and animators. Surprisingly, there are still streets beneath the textures of the water. Everything is carefully planned and measured. 

You could say that the creators focused so much on the realism of the flood that they frustrated me. The journey through the sunken city is presented very convincingly, although switching from boat to boat after only five meters of the journey becomes very painful after a few hours of play.

More, more horror!

I must admit that I was waiting impatiently for the premiere of The Sinking City . I am a fan of the atmosphere created by works based on Lovecraft’s stories: from board games, through movies, to music and computer games. Frogware’s game maintains this atmosphere, which is not easy.    

Virtually everyone knows the story of Call of Cthulhu . It is extremely difficult to arouse anxiety, horror and disgust with something that has been duplicated by a huge number of different media in a variety of ways. When one of the Eldritch abomination appears to our eyes, we already know what it is, so the element of surprise, the mystery, disappears. It is also known how the fate of the heroes tormented by visions will end. Despite this, I believe that The Sinking City has taken up this topic very well and – above all – brilliantly presented the gradual degradation of the main character’s sanity. At times, I was not sure if there was actually a dream on the screen, or if it was just my imagination. However, a quick glance at the sanity icon reassured me of my own fantasy.

“His eyes looked good …”

The Sinking City is a detective game. Its menu consists of, among others with mind palace, clues and casebook. When solving the first task, I immediately liked the possibility of choosing different ways to combine the available tips. Every private detective, no matter how much he claims about his impartiality, has his own opinion on the case under investigation. Its result largely depends on the opinion of the investigator. The same is true for players – we may have different views on the characters and situations we study. There is nothing more annoying to me than the opinion imposed by the story, so I appreciate that when combining evidence, we can be guided by empathy, logic or pure evil (yes, the game also allows ruthless choices). 

Despite its deep roots in the detective genre,  The Sinking City has elements of a classic RPG, such as the possibility of crafting (first aid kit, bullets for weapons) or available (two) trees to buy skills. However, the creators do not force us to fight monsters – I am convinced that it is possible to complete the game by defeating only a few mutants. After a few attempts at sneaking and hiding from monsters, I appreciated this option, as the fight in The Sinking City made me extremely frustrated. Reed, could you be more mobile!

Of course, for those who are looking for valuable items, there will be areas contaminated with abominations, but completing the game does not require visiting such zones.

Women were invented in 1960.

One of the questions that also arose during the game was: where are the women in this game? During the first 25 hours of the game, we meet only a few black female representatives (all have the same face, only different hairstyles), an assistant in the local newspaper and a librarian whose mouth was sewn up by her boss, because it is a legal and respected punishment in Oakmont. You may think I’m clinging to everything, although this is clearly evident in Sinking City – the game gives us a wide variety of men to interact with, while the number of such women can be counted on the fingers of one hand. 

The creators announced 30-40 hours to complete the game, but I have the impression that this is the average time to complete the main tasks and important side orders. I will also mention that The Sinking City , like most games produced in recent years, offers several different endings, depending on the choices made during the game.

Barman! Another ritual, please

I am surprised to admit that I had a better time playing Call of Cthulhu , released in 2018 . Contrary to the positive impressions I shared a few paragraphs ago, I have a feeling that Cyanide’s game allowed me to make more everyday choices, which – although weakly influencing the overall gameplay – increased my immersion with the game and empathy towards the main character. 

The Sinking City brings nothing new to both the computer game industry and the detective game genre. However, it is a good interpretation of Call of Cthulhu , which – despite its cosmetic flaws – will surely appeal to fans of the genre. 

Keep in mind, however, that the game is another look at Lovecraft’s reworked short story. So we are witnessing once again how cosmic horror meets the everyday life of people who, despite the tragedy of the flood, visit their favorite bar every weekend and remember to go to work every day. The only change the people of Oakmont have made to their calendar after the flood are a few hours set aside for a dark ritual in a neighborly cult.  

We would like to thank CDP for making a copy of the game available for review.