Frogwares reveal wet survival horror sequel The Sinking City 2, taking the dev "in a newer direction" in 2025

rockpapershotgun.com:

Frogwares finally regained sole control of The Sinking City in January, after years of dispute, and have wasted no time in now revealing a sequel, with an upcoming Kickstarter campaign for a "safety net", coming in 2025. The new and extremely damp survival horror game, set in a heavily flooded New England city in the 1920s, is pivoting the studio to a "'horror-first' focus with gameplay primarily built around combat, exploration and its Lovecraftian setting and story". This is a step away from the studio's mainstay, the Sherlock Holmes detective games, and I am uncertain about the choice. But let's peer through the weeds a bit further.

They're not doing away with detection entirely though. You can still do detection-ing in the game, but it's optional, "offering tangible gameplay bonuses and eureka moments without it being a requirement to progress", per executive producer Denys Chebotarov. So if you bother to investigate things you're more likely to find other options for progression, that kind of kidney. The emphasis here is more on shooting monsters will antique guns, and scrounging up useful bits and pieces of debris to stash in your limited inventory.

There's also "a morally grey and captivating story" with all cults and mutants and giant, weirdly ripped octopus lads - Lovecraft, innit (which, I should point out, I had some issues with in the first game). The Sinking City 2 is a separate and stand-alone story from the original game, with what seems to be a different protagonist, if the spooky-ooky cinematic trailer is anything to go by. A new protagonist makes sense, becuase the original protagonist was a private investigator, and it's quite hard to make detection optional when you're one of those.

The city in the title is a different one too, that being Arkham, while the original game was set in Oakmont. The vibes sound like they'll be very similar though, i.e. everything is flooded, with the presser mentioning "decaying mansions, flooded markets and abandoned