▷The Sinking City: dark review for the mystery surrounding Oakmont 🥇

It is evident that Frogwares is committed to following the investigation line in the new title: The Sinking City. All the advice and criticisms for the latest title “Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter” have been received, and in the Lovecraftian adventure you can see proof of the team's courage in going into territories of still unexplored game mechanics. Unfortunately, as often called into question by the Providence writer, horror and darkness are lurking, even for the Ukrainian team.

The Sinking City: a gripping storyline

Charles W. Reed is a brilliant and well-known private investigator (reminds you of anything?) which has long been afflected by nightmares and terrible visions. These repeated perceptions of danger become more and more intense and tormented, leading our detective to catch up Oakmont nel Massachussets. Thanks to the correspondence with Johannes van der Berg, intrigued and fascinated by Reed's visions, he arrives in the town as it turns out to be the source of these visions, which also happened to others. The same journey of arrival is disturbed by images of madness and occult terror, without however having a clear explanation. As soon as you arrive in the city, you immediately realize that as well as a reason for mystery, this place is plagued by numerous problems including natural disasters, feuds between local families, racism and discrimination. The perfect place for monsters to rise, both inside and outside.

The sinking city begins: you breathe and live Lovecraft

Particularly in the last decade, there are numerous works that pay homage to the writer, father of horror and science fiction. We have seen the proliferation of cinematographic, musical, videogame, comic and narrative products, with a significant boom in terms of play in board games. Despite this, the achievements that manage to plunge the spectator, the reader or the player into the deep Lovecraftian obscurities, are very few. The Sinking City presents itself as the videogame that represents this world par excellence, not so much for the faithful reproduction of the contents as if it were a transposition of the literary genre, but more for the immersion and depth of the environment. The feeling of anguish, madness, mistrust and mystery are so well concocted and staged, that they imbue the player with them like a sponge in a bucket of water from the very first moments.

The Sinking City: fitting setting

We are in America of the 20s, in Massachusets. The search for an authentic atmosphere, albeit immersed in an imaginary story, is perceived by the attention to detail, evident in every aspect. There structure of the city, lighting and way of dressing of the characters resume those characteristics aspects that can be assimilated to a noir. The filigree is soiled by an almost incessant rain, and thegloomy environment is permeated by a palpable economic crisis. The situation is dramatic even from the point of view of natural disasters, the city was in fact afflicted by a serious flood, which in addition to evident damage to the environment, led to the use of bartering to replace the currency, devoid of any economic value. As for the time, and this plays a notable applause in favor of the title, they are also reproduced here very strong and bloody psychological dynamics under the aspect of prejudices and racism that penetrate the network of social values. At times, unfortunately, all too similar to current events that we are witnessing today. There are no qualms on the part of the software house to speak openly to the player, making him feel, like the protagonist himself, a foreigner not welcome in the Oakmont community.

Faced with a surprisingly faithful reproduction, the Lovecraftian vision waterproofed by a terror of the unknown and an anxiety-inducing tension always lurking, thanks to the well-thought-out use of lights, colors, and visions of the protagonist that brings back to the fear of the "not known "and of the innermost thoughts of the human mind.

The gameplay and game mechanics

If we look at the game as a whole, it is possible to identify three fundamental aspects on which the gameplay is focused: the investigative phase, the exploratory phase, and combat.

Investigations and deductions

The phase of investigations, deductions and reconstructions of the facts is one of the mechanics very dear to Frogwares. In the series of Sherlock Holmes titles, the system has been tested several times, making improvements from time to time that make the system even more enjoyable in this title.

As a fan of the well-known London detective's series in The Sinking City, I particularly appreciated these aspects. The Ukrainian software house wanted to listen to the public, making it less guided than Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter, the collection of clues and the deduction of solutions. Here too, we proceed step by step, first by collecting the various traces that can be recovered through the incriminated places, or from npg. The various clues collected will bring up possible deductions inside a panel called "Mental Palace" (another small reference to the technique much used by Holmes), all the deductions can be correlated with each other, unraveling the case from time to time. The conclusions are not unique and our decisions will have consequences on the community and on the characters we will meet. The choice of how to solve a case is always up to the player, and in this process a greater freedom is perceived.

Added to this are the mechanics of reconstruction of the events, which thanks to the exceptional skills and visions of the protagonist, are displayed as real imaginary journeys that retrace the facts, or as semi-visible traces to follow.

Exploration

The Sinking City wants to propose itself as an open world within the town of Oakmont and in the depths of the abyss. The free exploration of the city, without guided tours as in previous Frogwares titles, alternates between alleys and canals. To face the canals by swimming freely is tantamount to certain death due to aquatic monsters eating men, fortunately the boats for navigation are never lacking at every docking. In the city, some of the houses can be explored, identifiable thanks to a narrative expedient in the form of a code that identifies the houses that can be entered and the degree of difficulty of the challenges they contain.

But unfortunately the title fails under the exploratory, here we find the limitations of the management of the room and of the character that outline the characteristics of an obsolete system and not in step with the times. Frogwares tries to rise and expand his horizons, but fails in the attempt. The maze of streets and canals is complex, but in the wrong way: the mechanical annoy the user and do not marry the potential of the environments who, from hostile towards the stranger, become unplayable and unbearable to the player.

The software house tries in every way to circumvent the limits of the now inadequate game engine, but the narrative and artistic tricks, even if made with a lot of passion, are noticed and clash with the irremediable mismanagement of the classic and simple shift from a point A to a point B: let alone free exploration. In the face of an exploratory view very close to the character, a slight move away from the camera would have been preferable, which would have allowed a more open field with the consequence of a better identification of places, objectives and a more enjoyable sensation of exploration. This does not it happens due to obvious technical limitations of the engine used, thus leading to the confusion of the places of destination and the frustration due to orientation even in closed environments. Furthermore, we soon realize that the houses that can be accessed are not as many as we are hinted at.

Impossible to play? No, however getting used to the game's thinking may take a few hours, enough to make everything built decay in terms of immersion. Probably some of these defects are known to the software house so much that, to overcome or try to keep up with the times, it has introduced rapid travel within the city.

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Combat

A further expansion of the game mechanics is the combat system. In this title in fact, it will be possible to have both a white weapon (basically a spade at least in the initial phase of the game) and a ranged weapon.

Enemies can inflict both physical and psychic damage, which is why our inventory features first aid kits and anti-psychotics. There is actually an attempt to implement a more action component than the narrative standard the Ukrainian team is accustomed to, in fact the different weapons need to be reloaded, and this expands the game experience to resource crafting and bartering aimed at get more ammo.

But unfortunately this aspect also falls victim to all the limitations of the engine, the shooting proves to be woody, unresponsive and very inaccurate. It does not improve the situation with the white weapon, which combined with the poor management of the very slow camera, makes it very difficult to face even basic enemies. In the face of these aspects, even the curing mechanism is cumbersome and slow and during a heated battle it becomes difficult to restore health and "psyche".

The only thing that saves the combat mechanic is the very low percentage we will run into in a fight, but perhaps not low enough to be negligible.

Graphic compartment

Although the Ukrainian team has acquired a certain historicity in the use of Unreal Engine, under the graphic aspect the title could have been good maybe 3 years ago. To date it would have been playable again, defining it as "aged well enough". Unfortunately, despite having tried to push the game engine as much as possible, and all possible precautions have been taken, the models are repeated often, the expressiveness of the faces is insufficient to cope with ever banal and compelling dialogues and the framerate, as well as the loading of the npgs, disappoints. All this is really a shame because the direction uses very interesting solutions that are able to fully marry with the setting and the music, and in some situations the absence of loading when entering buildings is surprising.

The Sinking City: Does the game sink with the city?

The guys from Frogwares are trying to emerge with a qualitative leap to follow in the footsteps of other independent teams that have "broken through" the market. However, the expectations are too many, and the software house finds itself in its hands a bomb ready to explode for too high aims. and a realization not up to them. For all those who love the Lovecraftian atmosphere and a narrative-investigative sector, the suggestion is to be patient and get used to it also to defects, which in some cases turn out to be heavy to overcome (some bugs and glitches require a proven ability to swallow). The sound aspect, the music, the characterization of the dialogues, the atmosphere, the narration and the investigative mechanics are the real flagship of this title. Thanks to these aspects it is possible to enjoy it, calmly, and hope in the good direction that Frogwares is taking. As a lover of the genre I don't feel like rejecting it, but it is honestly impossible not to recognize its limits, flaws and disappointments. It is necessary that the software house upgrades its game engine, net of the technical limitations and the consequent solutions adopted…. it would have been a gem.