Oakmont’s an eerie place. As you arrive in its muddied, waterlogged streets, it’s quickly apparent that this city – perhaps once a bustling portside metropolis – is under the thrall of something truly sinister. What that is? No one knows: but it’s madness-inducing, violence-inciting, and its tendrils are starting to hack at the corners of your vision. This is The Sinking City, Frogwares’ 1920s-set RPG, and one of my favorites ever made.
You are Charles Reed, WWI veteran turned private investigator. You’ve been summoned to Oakmont by the mysterious Professor Johannes van der Berg, an eccentric gentleman who’s promised to analyze the visions Reed’s been having after surviving the sinking of the USS Cyclops. As you trudge through muddy water, you’ll find yourself in the employ of the gigantic Robert Throgmorton, the head of one of Oakmont’s founding families who, as you may expect, wants to uncover the source of the flood that’s earned the town the moniker of “The Sinking City.”
Like all the best survival horror games, you’ll find yourself rummaging through drawers and cabinets, Amnesia-style, in search of anything vaguely resembling a weapon, with ammunition being particularly scarce. As you attempt to unearth the city’s secrets, you’ll encounter otherworldly creatures and humans gone wild, and where your detective senses fail, you’ll be able to use your supernatural sight to unlock enchanted rooms and piece together crime scenes. It reminded me in many ways of Nobody Wants to Die, so perhaps Critical Hit Games took some inspiration there.
But around every corner lurks something. You move throughout the city by boat, with some routes being cut off entirely, while others lead you down dark, twisting alleyways. It makes running away from whatever’s lurking in the unknown that much harder, and you’ll need to rely on your map to get from A to B safely.
My favorite thing, however, is the good ol’ fashioned deduction. As an L.A. Noire savant, piecing things together using disparate crime scene evidence is all part of what makes detective games so fun for me, and given its surreal setting, you do come across some fun little oddities. Just be careful: they probably bite.
If I’ve sold you a ticket to Oakmont, I’m not liable for any limbs you end up losing. But, perhaps the fact that you can get The Sinking City Remastered (which only released earlier this year) for $12 instead of $39.99 will help soften the blow. It’s part of a wider Frogwares bundle over on Humble, which includes several of the developer’s Sherlock Holmes games, too, with the eerie Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes The Awakened being my personal favorite.
You’ll need to buy the $12 / £10.76 bundle to pick up The Sinking City Remastered, but given that it includes 11 other Frogwares titles, valued at a total of $264 / £200.94, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal, even if you don’t play any of the Sherlock games. Just click the button below to let the Gods in.
Frogwares is currently working on The Sinking City 2, which transports the action to the infamous city of Arkham, where the Deep Ones have made their home. While it was recently hit with a delay, pushing it into “early 2026,” I’m excited to see what comes next, even if I sense I may not like what I find.
