The sinking city reviews full#

As part of the whole ‘no hand holding’ thing, there’s a lack of a mini map. One of the issues that rises quickly is that Oakmont is not fun to travel around. However, the execution of it all is a sad reminder that sometimes immersive doesn’t mean entertaining. The idea of it is great, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has wanted more grounded aspects to puzzle solving/detective work in games. The Sinking City makes you work for everything and does its best to make the investigations immersive. When you’re trying to find a missing person or need to find an address, you’re going to have to go to the Hospital or the City’s newspaper archives to find the right information.

The sinking city reviews full#

You’re not given a mini map so if you want to find your next objective marker, you have to open up the full map and find the location to mark it. This goes from how others will treat you, right down to navigating the many streets of Oakmont. It’s been great to see the ways his racist works can be subverted.Īs mentioned before, it’s immediately clear that you’re not welcome as an outsider or a newcomer, and you won’t get your hand held. Here Frogwares highlight and acknowledge the racism and xenophobia that plagues H.P.’s work and does something interesting with it. There is also tension against the fish people called Innsmouthers, who have recently been made refugees (a direct reference to a H.P. They’re usually awful, people driven mad or stuck in bad situations, and almost all of them are dismissive of you. Before that happens you’ll be spending a lot of time talking to people. There’s the looming threat of the tentacled Old Gods extinguishing all life, and whatever Old Gods do after that. What unfolds is a story of a city on the brink of madness, from which they already seemed pretty mad already. If Reed wants to discover the meaning of the visions, he’s going to have to deal with both. The citizens of the city are as unwelcoming as the soggy, warped and foreboding city itself. Oakmont is an unwelcoming place, especially to newcomers, of which Reed is reminded of constantly. Streets littered with decaying carcasses of fish, buildings encrusted in barnacles and whole streets cut off by the flood waters. A city that has experienced a supernatural flood that has cut it off from the mainland, as well as other supernatural phenomena. He has been requested by a mysterious client to learn more about the visions that he and others are experiencing in the city of Oakmont. Charles Reed is a former WW1 vet and Navy Diver, current Private investigator tormented by visions. Take the Old Gods, fish people, half-ape people and all the decay and cosmic horror, smoosh it together into an open world Detective game and you get The Sinking City. Developer Frogwares are proudly wearing their love for HP Lovecraft’s fiction on their sleeve with their decidedly not-another-Sherlock Holmes game. Lovecraft has made its way into plenty of games, either directly or inspired by.