The Sinking City

A DETECTIVE GAME WITH A LOVECRAFTIAN TWIST.

Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One | $TBC | www.thesinkingcity.com

THE SINKING CITY is a third-person detective adventure set in a fictional version of 1920s New England, inspired by the works of influential (and, yes, controversial) horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Divers uncover an ancient cavern hidden beneath Oakmont filled with otherworldly statues of cosmic demons, and are driven mad by the discovery – a madness that begins to spread through the city and awakens strange, violent creatures the locals call wylebeasts. The game is divided between solving crimes and shooting monsters, although the gulf in quality between each flavour of play is pretty wide.

Ukrainian developer Frogwares has been making Sherlock Holmes games for over a decade now, including 2014’s magnificent Crimes and Punishments. As such, The Sinking City is a decent detective game – particularly in its use of the blatantly Sherlock- inspired Mind Palace system. As you explore a crime scene you collect clues that, while useless on their own, can be connected in the Mind Palace to open up new lines of investigation. And you have to make these connections yourself, without any hand-holding or hints, which makes a successful deduction especially satisfying.

But while Sherlock Holmes has to rely entirely on his intelligence and intuition to solve a mystery, Reed has a supernatural advantage. In certain locations a glowing blue portal will open up, through which he can witness whichever crime transpired there. These vignettes come in the form of shimmering silhouettes of the people involved and fragments of speech. Reed must then construct a narrative, figuring out the order these echoes of the past occurred in, which will usually result in a new clue appearing in the Mind Palace.

My biggest issue with The Sinking City, at least as a detective game, is that the cases aren’t that interesting. One of the greatest strengths of Frogwares’ Sherlock games is encountering a confounding mystery and being overcome with a desire to solve it. But I rarely felt that compulsion here, and the solutions to many of the cases lacked a satisfying “Aha!’ moment – the punchline that should round off any good detective story.