The Sinking City 2 is not a detective game.
That is the first thing to know about Frogwares’ sequel, and it is the thing that will decide whether you want to play it. The 2019 original put you in a flooded Arkham as an investigator, chasing clues through a half-drowned Massachusetts city. The follow-up, out now on PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X|S, keeps the water and throws out the case files. It wants to be a survival horror game about combat, resource management and a landscape that will not hold still.
Frogwares developed and published The Sinking City 2. It runs on Unreal Engine 5. The game is single player, third person, and sits in the shooter and adventure genres with action, horror and survival themes. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is scheduled for 2027.
The sequel released on 18 August 2026. It is set in Arkham, Massachusetts, in the late 1920s, and it is a standalone story — you do not need to have played The Sinking City to follow it.
Trailer, via Frogwares.
Calvin Rafferty and the Ritual of Dreaming
The story opens in the summer of 1929, during a run of floods in Arkham. Calvin Rafferty is an adventurer. His partner is Faye Bennett, a university professor. Together they perform the Ritual of Dreaming, trying to reach the Dreamlands they read about in ancient tomes held at Miskatonic University.
Something goes wrong. Calvin wakes up. Faye does not. She stays in a supernatural coma, and the ritual that was supposed to open a door leaves her stranded behind it.
Over the next three months, the floods swallow Arkham. Then comes the Slither: parasitic worms that kill people and then use the corpses as puppets. The city is being emptied and then reoccupied by things wearing the bodies of the people who used to live there.
Calvin spends that time researching how to wake Faye. He learns about a ritual called “The Call,” recorded in a book called the “Recitations of the Tenebrous Soul.” The ritual needs the dagger of Ult’hkandor, also called the blade of Ulthar.
By September 21st, the final day of evacuation, Calvin has the dagger. He also knows a copy of the book sits in the secret section of the university library. He goes to get it.
The Translator With Worms in His Eyes
Calvin recovers the book. He cannot read it. The languages are alien, and the words do not resolve into anything a human mouth could shape.
While searching the library he meets Corentin, a translator. Corentin has removed his own eyes and sown Slither worms into the empty orbital sockets. That is how he understands the creatures and their language. It is the single best image in The Sinking City 2, and the game knows it.
Corentin offers a trade. He will translate the ritual instructions if Calvin goes to the Devil’s Reef Hotel and brings back a woman named Lorelei, who is trapped there.
Calvin goes. What he finds is a siren. He also finds out what happened the night before: the hotel’s guests held a “World’s End Party,” where every guest fought to the death for the prize of one night of lust with Lorelei before she consumed him. Nobody survived the fight. Lorelei was left strung up.
That is the texture Frogwares is working with. It is ugly, it is specific, and it is drawn straight from the Lovecraft shelf without much interest in softening the source.
A City That Rearranges Itself
The pitch for The Sinking City 2 is a semi-open world where the flood keeps changing the map. Water rises as the story moves, and locations you learned in one hour are not the same places in the next. Exploration and combat are the focus.
You get an inventory system. You collect resources. You carry firearms and melee weapons, and you use both against enemies. There is an optional investigation system layered on top: solve puzzles, unlock alternate options, reveal lore and secrets, and pick up benefits for doing it.
That optional system is the compromise the sequel makes with its predecessor. The 2019 game was built around investigation. The 2026 game is built around fighting, and investigation is a side dish you can skip. Players who came for the detective work will feel the shift immediately.
The flood mechanic is the more interesting of the two ideas. A survival horror map usually teaches you a route and then tests whether you remember it under pressure. Here the route itself is the variable. That is a real design decision, not a marketing line.
What the Water Costs
The problem is that a changing landscape and an inventory system pull in opposite directions. Resource management rewards planning. A map that rearranges itself punishes planning. The Sinking City 2 wants both, and the tension between them never fully resolves.
Combat is where the game spends its confidence. Firearms and melee weapons, enemies that used to be neighbors, a city filling up with water and bodies. The Slither premise does a lot of work here: every corpse you meet is a possible puppet, which means the game can threaten you with the dead without inventing a new monster for every room.
Corentin is the proof that Frogwares still has the instincts that made the first game worth playing. A man who took out his own eyes to read a language written by worms is a better piece of horror writing than anything the combat encounters produce. The game’s best moment is a conversation.
The World’s End Party is the second-best. It is backstory, not a level, but it lands harder than most of what you actually play through, because it is a complete and awful idea rather than a mechanic.
Platforms and the Switch 2 Wait
The Sinking City 2 is out now on PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X|S. The Nintendo Switch 2 version is not out. It is scheduled for 2027, which means Switch 2 owners are looking at a wait of months, not weeks, with no date attached beyond the year.
Here is the release picture as it stands:
| Platform | Release date |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 5 | 18 August 2026 |
| Windows (PC) | 18 August 2026 |
| Xbox Series X | S |
| Nintendo Switch 2 | Scheduled 2027 |
That is a clean launch on three platforms and a delayed one on the fourth. Nothing in the source material explains the gap, and Frogwares has not said why the Switch 2 build is taking longer. If you own a Switch 2 and nothing else, you cannot play The Sinking City 2 this year.
Where the 7.6 Comes From
The Sinking City 2 holds a 7.6 out of 10 on the IGDB critic aggregate, drawn from three outlets. That is a good score with a small sample behind it, and it matches what the game actually is: a confident, ugly, well-made horror game that has changed genre between installments and not entirely replaced what it gave up.
Three reviews is not a consensus. It is a signal. Treat the 7.6 as a reasonable midpoint rather than a settled verdict, and expect the number to move as more outlets weigh in.
What the score gets right is the ceiling. The Sinking City 2 is not a great survival horror game, because its two central systems fight each other and the combat, while competent, is not the reason to be here. What the score also gets right is the floor. Corentin, the World’s End Party, the flood that rewrites the map, the Slither wearing the dead — this is a game with a real imagination behind it, and the imagination shows up in the writing more than in the shooting.
The Investigation Frogwares Made Optional
The sequel’s biggest gamble is dropping the investigation-first identity of The Sinking City and rebuilding around combat. That gamble half pays. The optional investigation system is still there, still rewarding, still the most distinctive thing Frogwares does, and it is now something you can ignore. A player who ignores it is playing a thinner game than the one Frogwares actually made.
If you played The Sinking City for the detective work, The Sinking City 2 will feel like a different series wearing the same title. If you wanted a Lovecraftian survival horror game with a flooded map that will not sit still, this is that, and the water is the best thing in it.
The Switch 2 delay is the part worth watching. A 2027 port with no date is a port that can slip, and Frogwares is a studio that has had to fight for its releases before. The three-platform launch is solid. The fourth platform is a promise.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
