They Built a Horror Game Through a Real War. The Sinking City 2 Is Finally Here

Ukrainian indie studio Frogwares built The Sinking City 2 through blackouts, drone attacks and war. Today it finally launched, and players are loving it.

The flooded streets of Arkham in The Sinking City 2. Image: Frogwares.

There is something strange about opening a horror game made by people who spent years dealing with something far more frightening than anything on the screen. The Sinking City 2 launched today, August 18, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. It is full of flooded streets, reanimated corpses, grotesque sea creatures and things that absolutely should not have tentacles. But before the game really begins, Ukrainian developer Frogwares reminds you what happened while they were making it.

An opening message references tens of thousands of air-raid sirens registered across Ukrainian cities during development and ends with a simple statement: work continued, and so did life. The game itself is fictional. The conditions under which it was made were very real.

Making a game when you did not sleep because of explosions

Frogwares has been making games in Ukraine for more than two decades, best known for its Sherlock Holmes series and the original The Sinking City. The sequel was originally expected earlier, but the studio delayed it after Russia's war repeatedly disrupted development. Head of publishing Sergiy Oganesyan described stretches when attacks on Ukraine's power infrastructure left the team without electricity for days, followed later by nights of mass drone attacks.

His description of trying to maintain a normal workday is difficult to forget: “You work all day, then spend the sleepless night listening for explosions.” The next morning, people still had to somehow function and make a video game.

That context makes the finished product feel a little different. Frogwares did not release an unfinished sympathy project and ask players to overlook its problems. They spent the extra time rebuilding much of what The Sinking City actually was.

Calvin Rafferty is the new protagonist of The Sinking City 2. Image: Frogwares / Steam.

They basically tore up the first game's formula

The original Sinking City was an ambitious open-world detective game. You investigated crimes, searched archives, pieced together clues and occasionally shot something that crawled out of Lovecraft's worst nightmare. It had great ideas, but even fans often criticized the repetitive open world and awkward combat.

For the sequel, Frogwares made a pretty bold decision: stop trying to make the same game again.

The Sinking City 2 is much closer to modern Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Arkham is still flooded and explorable, but the game is built around tighter survival-horror areas, limited ammunition, inventory management, safe rooms, puzzles, shortcuts and the constant suspicion that whatever room you just cleared will absolutely not stay cleared.

The protagonist is Calvin Rafferty, whose partner Faye is trapped after an occult ritual goes disastrously wrong. His search takes him through a supernatural 1920s Arkham filled with flooded neighborhoods, abandoned hospitals, fish markets, cults and creatures Frogwares describes with names like the Slither and Deep Ones.

Watch the official trailer

Official “Welcome to Arkham” trailer from Frogwares.

And visually, it is easily one of the most polished games Frogwares has produced. GamesRadar called it capable of standing in conversation with modern Resident Evil and Silent Hill, while PC Gamer described the sequel as a much more focused survival-horror experience than its predecessor.

Players seem to agree

The game has only just launched, so it is way too early to pretend we know its long-term reputation. But the opening reaction is impressive.

At the time I checked, Steam showed 95% positive reviews from 218 verified Steam purchasers, giving the game a Very Positive rating. Metacritic currently sits at 79 from 33 critic reviews, with 27 positive reviews, six mixed and none classified as negative. Those numbers will obviously move as more people finish the game.

The early Reddit reaction is similar. Players in the launch discussion are praising the environments, atmosphere, voice acting and story while still pointing out that combat can feel slightly rough around the edges. One player summed it up pretty well: the combat is still a little janky, but far better than the original.

That honestly sounds extremely Frogwares.

A little rough. Very ambitious. Weird in exactly the right places.

The game was partly carried by its own community

There is another indie part of this story that deserves attention. Frogwares took The Sinking City 2 to Kickstarter, where 6,181 backers pledged €554,002 to help fund development.

That is not enough money to finance a modern game of this size by itself, but for a studio operating under extraordinarily unstable conditions, crowdfunding gave Frogwares additional financial breathing room while also giving its community a direct stake in the project.

The developers even used player feedback during development while making something they had never really attempted before. Frogwares' background is primarily investigative adventure games; The Sinking City 2 is the studio's first full commitment to survival horror. Game director Alexander Gresko said making the genre required “a completely different kind of design thinking.”

In other words, they decided to learn an entirely new style of game development during possibly the least convenient circumstances imaginable.

There is a piece of the real war hidden inside Arkham

One of the game's most affecting details is apparently easy to miss.

During a hospital section, reviewers found medical X-rays and patient stories that appear to reference real injuries and experiences connected to the war in Ukraine. Wccftech's reviewer said realizing what the material represented briefly pulled him out of the fictional horror because the real-world meaning hit so hard.

Frogwares does not turn the entire game into an obvious war allegory. You are still running through Lovecraft's Arkham shooting monsters with disgusting things growing out of them. But the circumstances surrounding its development inevitably seep into parts of the game.

Even the basic premise starts feeling slightly different when you know who made it. Arkham is a city under catastrophe. People are told to evacuate. Sirens sound. Buildings are ruined. Characters keep trying to survive in a place that seems determined to become unlivable.

The Guardian noted that beneath all the cosmic horror sits a story about refusing to abandon something you love while signs of life remain. Considering where Frogwares was building it, that theme does not feel accidental.

This is why I love indie games

Not because every indie game is automatically better than something made by a huge studio. They obviously aren't.

It is because sometimes you can still feel the people behind one.

Frogwares could have delayed indefinitely. It could have scaled everything down. It could have made a safe sequel using exactly the same formula as the first game. Given what the team was dealing with, nobody reasonable could have blamed them.

Instead, they changed genres, moved to Unreal Engine 5, crowdfunded part of the project, redesigned their combat and level structure, delayed it when conditions made the original schedule impossible, and eventually finished the thing.

Now it is actually sitting on Steam, PS5 and Xbox.

And somehow the fictional flooded city full of impossible monsters might not even be the most remarkable part of the story.

Personally, I was interested in The Sinking City 2 because I like survival horror. After reading what Frogwares went through to finish it, I want to play it for a completely different reason.

Not because anyone should buy a game out of sympathy. The early reviews suggest Frogwares does not need that.

I just want to see what a team creates when, for several years, giving up would have been the completely understandable option.

The Sinking City 2 is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.