Frogwars authors are known mainly for their adventure series Sherlock Holmes and are now trying something new, more spooky and stranger. They will shoot into a special Lovecraft universe in the title The Sinking City. At the same time, they offer more freedom, openness and more options.
All of this is based on Sherlock Holmes as the game was supposed to be a sequel to the series, but the authors changed it to Lovecraft, which offers new possibilities and is also very suitable for the investigative style, as he also wrote detective books. They could add new mechanics, mysterious and supernatural things, and extend the action side. It will no longer be a pure adventure.
Specifically, the creators will take us to the sinking American fishing town of Oakmont in the 1920s. Cities that have a mysterious history associated with occultism and are still practiced there by residents. You get there after the strange unnatural floods hit the city and mysterious animals began to appear. As a detective, you were called by one of the city's powerful people who have visions to help uncover the origins of unusual creatures as well as the origins of the city's floods.
You get into the city and you are also accompanied by visions of the darkness of the sea, squid and monsters. Something has ruled this city, something wrong. You will see it as you arrive in the city, where you can see the ruined buildings, flooded streets, all dirty, with desperate people trying to survive the disaster. Not only are the cities drowning under their feet, they are also attacked by monsters from the sea. They don't know why, they don't know what's going on. Maybe you will find out something about it.
You are coming in the middle of a new mystery, the son of one of the city officials has disappeared, and while you are here, it is up to you to find out what happened. It will also be just one of many cases awaiting you in a large city. You are not examining just one case, but there will be several major and many side, simpler. In the side just help someone find, take a picture, but in the main investigate murders, looking for murderers in the city or even the entire lost expedition, which will be the basis of the story.
The game is not easy, it does not show you exactly where to go, what to find out. Although it helps you, but you have to deduce everything yourself, combine evidence and find the necessary places in the city. For example, in a murder on a ship, you must investigate the crime scene, look at the objects, secure all the evidence, and with your special ability you will visualize the murder sites, materialize the situations and sort them in order. You have to navigate the place and mark the sequence of the scene. You will then see the context and evidence that you move forward. For example, they reveal that the wounded murderer has escaped and you have to think where he could go. If you think to the hospital, you can go there and start questioning and gathering evidence.
You can determine the help of the game itself by setting the difficulty, which is divided here both in help and in battles, which can be more difficult or easier. However, the search can only be set to more demanding. It will never be easy. Expect that the game will take you around 15 hours, with the fact that if you want to do and solve everything will be over and over 20 hours. The higher the difficulty, the more complicated it will be and the more hours you will kill by looking for what to do next.
It is very well balanced, the game does not lead you by the hand and you have to think, browse the evidence and look for streets in the city where the evidence will lead you. Or, for example, if you only know some information about a murderer or a suspect, you can go to a filing cabinet in a newspaper, police, library, or university and try to find more information there.
Sometimes, the information may not be unambiguous and other results may come out, or, for example, you can cover the murderer and not tell someone that it was him. These are moral decisions that can have their consequences. It is up to you who you join and who is more likeable to you. Similarly, in interviews, some questions will affect the person's other answers and collaboration. In fact, in this city, some people resemble more animals than humans. Some look like fish, others look like monkeys. It's all strange, pure Lovecraft. For example, they have such strange habits to stitch someone's mouth - and that's just a shred of strange things you'll see in a flooded city. Not to mention monsters from the sea.
The monsters came with a flood, and they are strange spider creatures as well as various polypy creatures and massive squid in flooded areas. Everything will endanger you along the way, even if the authors did not want to give it too much weight, so it depends on you how much you will navigate this page. While fighting cannot be avoided altogether, you can limit it to the necessary areas. The monsters will also appear in places you need to explore. You can beat them in body fights or use firearms that you will find over time.
However, there is never enough ammunition, so you must save them. You have to search the cabinets in the buildings and if you do not find the bullets, you will discover at least different materials, from which you can create different types of ammunition, but also first-aid kits, traps and other things that you will use in meetings with enemies. It's not exactly the deepest part of the game, but along with the action, it's an add-on that refreshes the main adventure gameplay. Maybe the action itself could have been better processed. It is so clumsy in terms of aiming and shooting itself.
At least you can improve your skills by unlocking abilities, although this is more true of damage to your opponent or the stability of the submachine gun than to the control itself. But you can also unlock more inventory, more cartridges, larger cartridges, you can also unlock regeneration and more. Everything you get for XP, whether from cases or fighting.
Like shooting, the animations themselves could be more tightened. It directly asks for better motion capturing and higher level of processing. Frogwares does not have such budgets, and here it goes in its standard. It's not all as fluid and interconnected as it could be, and not tightened technically or in the quality of textures, but again I did not encounter significant problems, the game did not fall and crash.
In contrast, it is artistically elaborate and the city offers an amazing atmosphere. You feel the destruction and despair at every step. The fog here alternates with rain, night and thus enhances the harsh environment of the city. While the city is populated, you can see people roam around here (sometimes appear right in front of you), but keep in mind that there are no vehicles in operation, as every other street is flooded and you need to take them by boat. It is not suitable to swim, because octopuses are everywhere, but you will enjoy them more than enough, during the game you will also dive among them and fully enjoy their massiveness.
Interviews are well done, in which the authors have years of experience. Similarly impressive are the detective parts themselves, where you activate your skills and get to your alternative world, where you see traces in the environment. At the same time, you can organize and combine your discoveries in your memory palace to solve problems like Sherlock Holmes. It is well and intuitively processed. The fact that the whole game is in Czech will help a lot if you don't know English well. This is because you can find out other procedures and information directly from the texts. As a small point of interest, the authors added unlockable suits to the game and you can revive the game by changing the suit - if you would like to walk around the city like a fisherman or a gangster.
Frogwares made The Sinking City a very interesting title in which they combined their many years of experience with the detective genre in the Sherlock Holmes series, adding action, skills and craft. Although they are just accessories, they nicely extend the gameplay and depth of the game. Maybe the authors still don't have the technical details and animations tight, but the atmosphere is great, the story is impressive and Lovecraft fans will enjoy it all. It is probably a better quality incorporation of Lovecraft themes so far. Plus, of course, fans of Sherlock Holmes will enjoy it as well, as the game excels in the quest and exploration.
