Techraptor reports that the new version of The Sinking City will be free for existing players:

New Version of The Sinking City Will Be Free for All Players

Frogwares has confirmed that the new version of The Sinking City will indeed be free for all existing players.

A close-up of protagonist Charles Reed in Frogwares' game The Sinking City
Frogwares has confirmed that when the new version of investigative horror game The Sinking City arrives on Steam, it will be free for all existing players.

This news was revealed as part of an FAQ for the new version of the game, in which Frogwares flatly confirms that the new version will, indeed, be available for players at no additional charge.

When the new version of The Sinking City was revealed last week, Frogwares didn't technically confirm that players wouldn't have to pay for the game again, although it was assumed this would be the case.

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Thanks Couchpotato!

Couchpotato spotted an update for The Sinking City:

Frogwares is now the sole publisher of The Sinking City

We look forward to sharing more news about the future of the franchise down the line.
Hey folks, we have some big news.

Frogwares is now the sole publisher of The Sinking City on all platforms, including Steam. We're happy to finally put this whole thing behind us, and we look forward to sharing more news about the future of the franchise down the line.

Now, please read carefully the information below:
We will soon release a new version of The Sinking City that comes with all the latest bug fixes and optimizations as well as a few things to keep in mind:

• Due to a number of technical reasons, your old saves won't be compatible with the new version. Don't worry though, when you launch the game, you will have the option to keep playing the old version if you want to finish it.
• We're keeping the old version only for a limited time. Please, consider finishing your playthrough before February 28, 2024!
• We will also release a new DLC, Merciful Madness, but please keep in mind that it will only work with the new version of the game. If you don't want to replay the game from scratch to access the DLC, you will be able to download the prepared saves that will take you straight to the start of the Merciful Madness quests.

We want to thank you all for your support and patience.
Your Frogwares Team

The Sinking City is again listed on Steam according to PCInvasion. Apparently the reason the game was not available on Steam earlier, despite the Appeal ruling, was due to the Epic exclusivity deal period which has now expired. The game is not currently available to buy.

While the litigation is still ongoing, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in October of 2020 that the contract termination was unlawful and ordered Frogwares to continue fulfilling it. Due to this ruling, The Sinking City is now once again available on all storefronts, including Steam.

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The Sinking City is an adventure and investigation game set in an open world inspired by the universe of H.P. Lovecraft, the master of Horror. The half-submerged city of Oakmont is gripped by supernatural forces. You're a private investigator, and you have to uncover the truth of what has possessed the city… and the minds of its inhabitants.

• An oppressive atmosphere and story inspired by the universe of H.P. Lovecraft.
• A vast open world that can be explored on foot, by boat, in a diving suit…
• High replay value thanks to an open investigation system: each case can be solved in a number of ways, with different possible endings depending on your actions.
• An arsenal of weapons from the 1920s with which to take on nightmarish creatures.
• Manage your mental health to untangle the truth behind the madness.

GameWatcher reports that The Sinking City has been removed from stores due to breach of contract.

The Sinking City Removed From Stores

Frogwares would receive payment for various production milestones and a share of the revenue once the game hit the market. The trouble, claims the developer, began shortly after.

"During production, BBI/Nacon was hundreds and hundreds of days behind in payments in total. Each sum due on average being 40 days late, while our milestones were always on time and approved by the licensee. We had to issue formal notices multiple times so that we were able to receive the money that was owed to us." read the statement from Frogwares.

"Once BBI/Nacon bought out a competing studio working on another Lovecraftian game, they dictated that we give them our source code for The Sinking City. Once again, BBI/Nacon does not own the IP - they are a licensee. They sell the game - not develop and co-create it. After we refused to comply, we stopped receiving financial contributions for over 4 months." it continued.

To avoid confusion, Bigben Interactive rebranded its video game publishing arm as Nacon last year while also melding it with its peripheral business. For the purposes of this article, both names refer to the same entity.

Frogwares asked to see The Sinking City's sales forecasts only to receive documents which it labels as being "inconsistent" and impossible to use in predicting sales.

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@Wccftech Frogwares was interviewed about what they are working on now after the success of The Sinking City.

Let's talk about the game for a while. Your 'City Generator' tech demo was quite famous ahead of the release. With the benefit of hindsight, are you satisfied with this approach used for The Sinking City? Do you plan to use it again in the future and if so, are there any specific improvements you're looking to make? 

We are happy with the approach, for several reasons, mainly because we simply wouldn’t have been able to create the atmosphere of a Lovecraftian town on this scale without the tool. It’s just not the same if your world only had 10 streets. It was a technical achievement for us, a small team being able to make a full-scale city. This was a very clear example of needing to innovate in order to actually get the job done.
However, we’ve realized the tool’s shortcomings too and we’re now working to improve it to create much more varied surroundings in future games. To give you an example, we’ve really altered our approach to how we create street environments, interiors, etc compared to what we did for The Sinking City. We looked closely at the players’ feedback and as a result, this is one of the areas we want to focus on. We’re now aiming to make each street and building feel more unique, and as a result, to make the city feel more authentic. All while still being able to benefit from some of the time saving the tool initially gave us.

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Are you planning to keep your next project open world or perhaps you'd rather go back to the segmented level structure seen in your Sherlock games?

With the tools that we have, and more importantly, with the experience that we have gained, we do want to continue to explore this concept. Our goal is to create the ultimate open world detective experience, or the best detective experience possible.
Now, when it comes to the size of the open world relative to its content, this is of course something we will continue to work on and optimize, based on the feedback that we received. In an age where you regularly see players complain about “open- word fatigue” we’re now more accepting of the idea of quality vs quantity.

On that note, Frogwares fans want to know whether you're going back to Sherlock Holmes (as teased in a recent tweet) or perhaps continuing with your intriguing Lovecraft-inspired setting. Is there anything you can share yet?

I can confirm we are working on something, but we are not ready to reveal what it is. What I can tell you is that fans best know us for our detective games, and this new game will fit the Frogwares profile - a story-focused detective adventure with minimum hand-holding. But is it going to be Sherlock, The Sinking City 2 or a new IP - that I, unfortunately, cannot say just yet.

Game Debate checked out The Sinking City:

Wet Sematary

The Sinking City Review

So hold on to your fedora for a second, because things are going to get a little meta.

OK. So back in the early 1980s RPGs were pretty much solely people getting together in small groups with pencils and dice, pretending to be elves and wizards. Then, suddenly, inexplicably, a tabletop game came along where people played 1920s flappers and private eyes, and fought monsters they couldn't beat. And for some weird reason that I still can't fully understand, it was wildly popular.

Oh, I mean, I understand very well why it was FUN. There was this strong investigative thread where your characters hung around in dusty newspaper archives looking up things that had happened in the past in an attempt to understand whatever the mystery of the week was. It was interesting to see the real world cast through a new, strange lens. Not that it was actually new, of course - the world of H.P. Lovecraft dated back as far as the turn of the Twentieth Century - but it was certainly a new way to play RPGs. And while it was fun to a certain class of studious, history-minded nerds (like me), like I said I'm still a little mystified as to its continued success.

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The Sinking City is deeply evocative in its oppressive dourness, and stays true to the investigative backbone of Cthulhu. We are presented an open world of horror and suspense that HP Lovecraft surely would have enjoyed investigating.

Pros

•     evocative
•     intelligently written

Cons

•     poor stealth
•     fairly easy
•     limited number of maps

MMORPG checked out The Sinking City:

The RPG Files: The RPG Files: The Sinking City Review - PC

I’m not a big Lovecraft buff, but I’ve always appreciated the tangential games and what little bits of knowledge of Cthulu-inspired lore I’ve picked up along the way. The existential cosmic horror is nightmarish indeed, but few games have really tapped into the feelings and stories presented by the hellscape Lovecraft invented. Frogware’s The Sinking City, thankfully, is one such game. This is our review.
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If you’ve ever been a fan of Frogware’s other investigative RPGs (their Sherlock stuff is fantastic), you’ll know what to expect here. The Sinking City is inspired by Lovecraft, but it’s not specifically based on any of his stories, from what I understand. Set in a fictional city of Oakmont, Massachussets in the 1920s, you play detective and WWI veteran Charles Reed as he investigates a murder in the perpetually flodded town, as well as his own nightmares which seem inexcplicably tied to the locale.
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But any big issues I have with the sort of jank Sinking City has is wiped away by a massively enjoyable and troubling story. Great investigations, loads of side quests, and solid character progression make for an RPG that’s worth the price of admission on whatever your chosen platform is. A Switch port is due out this fall, too. Just know that the ending, of which there are multiple, often falls a bit flat or anticlimactic. The game’s many stories are worth seeing through, but after such a good build up, it’s a bit hard to come to a good conclusive ending.

Score: 7.5 / 10

The Sinking City is now available on the Epic Game store:

Plunge into insanity

The Sinking City is an adventure and investigation game inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the master of horror.

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Step in the shoes of a 1920s investigator, a tortured truth seeker sucked into an adventure that goes beyond his personal goals and beliefs.

Trapped in a flooded city, you explore an urban open world, infiltrate its secretive society and investigate cases putting your common sense to the test with the goal of saving what can be, and most importantly, yourself.

Here are the first reviews for the adventure RPG The Sinking City:

Twinfinite - Score: 4/5

Tech Advisor - Score: 4.5/5

PC Invasion - Score: 7/10

True Achievements - Score: 3/5

Bloody-Disgusting - Score: 3/5

Wccftech interviewed the devs behind The Sinking City.

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Q: The Sinking City is an open world game. How difficult has it been to develop an investigation game in a much bigger setting?

A: The game is a heavily story-driven game, so it’s not an open world sandbox game where you can go fishing, or you can go have a drink with your buddies, nothing like that. Still, it’s been definitely challenging because we needed to make sure that players don’t get lost. For this reason, we put hints in every part of the city to make it easy to put clues and conclusions together. It’s in the evidence, you can just analyze it and you will get figure out where to go next.

Q: Are there multiple ways to complete missions?

A: There are linear and nonlinear parts in each quest. You reconstruct the trail to find out who committed a crime, but at the same time it’s possible to gather different pieces of information, which can be optional, that give a better understanding of what’s going on, and why somebody did something. There are also moral choices in almost every quest, and some of them will have consequences. Getting a better understanding of the motives may make you sympathize more with a character rather than another.

Q: Are there multiple endings?

A: Yes.

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WellPlayed has a preview which notes the attention to detail while CogConnected thinks The Sinking City has reinvented investigation games.

While the build I had access to wasn’t the final version, I was impressed with just how much effort had gone into making the world feel dilapidated yet alive. From the moment I stepped off the boat and onto the pier at Oakmont port the sense of something unsettling disrupting the city was apparent. Rotting carcasses lined the piers, half-submerged boats lay marooned in the shallows of the city’s bay, and crazed denizens spoke of visions and ancient ruins. It was dark, gritty and grim – a bit like stepping into a Lovecraft-inspired visual novel.

You see Oakmont – a fictional city based in Massachusetts – has been afflicted by a devastating flood which not only left parts of the city submerged and a large number of its populace suffering from visions and hysteria, but has brought with it nightmare creatures from the sea. Reed, who is also suffering from these maddening visions, has journeyed to Oakmont in hope of finding the source of the madness.

[...]

During the demo, Charles is asked to solve the murder of a medium at the Crown Theater. Arriving at the crime scene you’ll clearly see the police markers for the evidence yet this is the only help the game offered. You’ll take the time to examine everything you can in the room and utilize a strange ability Charles has when inspecting things; he is able to examine a piece of evidence and see through time to the items history and gather more information on its origin. Once all of the evidence in the theater was collected, Reed entered a portal that ripped through reality in the room and was able to use the evidence to see a few glimpses of moments that occurred. It is then up to the player to determine in which order these events happened.

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Thanks Farflame!

A new trailer for The Sinking City has been released, focussing on the horror and rotten powers gripping the city.

Wccftech reports on some new gameplay video for The Sinking City.

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In this new mission, Charles Reed finds Mr. Throgmorton who entrusts him with a theft case tinged with obscure nuances.

Thanks Farflame!

The Sinking City was previewed by Destructoid.

Because the game is still in beta, there were several bugs and unfinished assets I encountered, all of which fell on the more hilarious side of the spectrum. One prominent character had her model used for multiple other characters, the city’s hospital had patients with a nasty case of levitating all over the place, and, my personal favorite, two NPCs on the city streets were standing face to face as one repeatedly shot the other one in the stomach with a shotgun. Those will obviously – or hopefully – be fixed by the time the game launches, leaving the only other bit of worry I have about the title centered on one of the themes of the game: racism (something I can only imagine was also inspired by H.P. Lovecraft).

Upon starting it up, a disclaimer let me know The Sinking City isn’t going to shy away from controversial subject matter. The game takes place in a time when racism was rampant in America, though writing that sentence right now makes me realize I should be more specific and say it takes place in the past. Initially, I thought the game would only tackle more fantastical racist themes with two hybrid species present in the narrative: the Planet-of-the-Ape-like Throgmorton’s and fish-faced Insmouthers. However, as you can clearly see from the picture above, actual racism against black people plays a role too.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

DSOGaming reports on a GameInformer video which shows 15 minutes of new gameplay footage from The Sinking City.

GameInformer has shared a video, showing 15 minutes of new gameplay footage from Frogwares’ upcoming Loftcraftian game, The Sinking City. Naturally, we strongly suggest avoiding this video in case you want to experience this game for yourselves as it most likely contains spoilers about certain things.

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The release date for The Sinking City has been shifted to June 27.

2019-03-08: Kiev, Ukraine |  Frogwares, the team behind The Sinking City have updated their release date - June 27th, 2019

With so many games set to come out over the next few months, and after the massive AAA release overload of February, the team has decided to release their game in a less crowded time-frame. The additional time will also be spent on minor improvements and polishing the game.

An extended explanation video from the studio is below:

Some new gameplay video for The Sinking City.

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So, you think being a sleuth within a decaying city of Oakmont, full of criminals, cultists, Innsmouthers, witches, and Cthulhu knows what is easy? Well, it's definitely not...

In this Detective Gameplay Trailer for The Sinking City, we will explore the ways you will be able to uncover mysteries, solve crimes and deliver justice while fighting the inevitable...

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DSOGaming reports that The Sinking City has been delayed until May 24th. They base this on an Amazon listing so this should be treated as speculation until official confirmation.

Frogwares has not confirmed yet this delay, however, I’m pretty sure we’ll hear more about it this upcoming week. And since we haven’t heard anything about this title yet, I’m pretty sure that the game has been indeed delayed (I mean Frogwares has not released any new trailer or screenshots for the game one month prior to its release). My guess is that the team will confirm – or deny – this rumour soon so stay tuned for more.

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PSU gives five reasons why you should be excited for The Sinking City which will release March 21st.

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Investigations that have non-linear progression and multiple endings

With Frogwares being ultra-experienced at this whole detective lark (they do have numerous Sherlock Holmes titles under their belts after all), it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that all the sleuthing stuff in The Sinking City is actually pretty banging.

For a start, The Sinking City does away with the typical waypoint and quest marker system, and instead requires players to navigate their way to the destination by using landmarks and other points of interest. Additionally too, there are multiple ways to complete each case, which in turn leads to a variety of different endings too. In short, The Sinking City looks to actually make you feel like a proper detective, rather than someone who, well, isn’t.

Thanks Farflame!

A new video paying homage to the ideas behind H.P. Lovecraft's work, has been made by The Sinking City team.

An animations update video for The Sinking City.

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It's time to give you a glance at what our animation team has been cooking! ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tortured by his past and otherworldly visions, Charles W. Reed, a private investigator finds himself in Oakmont, Massachusetts, seeking salvation from the creeping insanity that afflicts him. Once a trade harbor, known for its lucrative smuggling business, Oakmont now lives in secluded isolation from the rest of the world, under a flood of supernatural origins. In this place of decay and superstition; players will have to deal with the dregs of mankind, follow clues they wish they had never found, and unveil a cosmic horror threatening the world itself.

The devs of The Sinking City show off their city building tool in creating a part of Instanbul in 8 hours time. This tool is going to be available for free once the game is released.

28/09/2018: Kiev, Ukraine –  Ask any open-world game dev and they’ll tell you creating a digital city is a massive undertaking, often manually placing assets street by street. To help streamline the creation of Oakmont, the fictional 1920’s flooded metropolis in The Sinking City, Frogwares created their own city builder tool in Unreal Engine 4.

One of the brains behind the tool, Katerina Frolova, is a trained architect and level designer. Her design allows users to set a few urban planning variables inside the tool and then city districts can be generated at the click of a button. Something that normally takes weeks, can now be done in hours.

For an internal test of the tech, Frogwares asked fans on social media to vote from a list of iconic cities. The team would then see how big a district they could recreate within just 8 hours / 1 working day. Armed with buildings created earlier for The Sinking City and a Google Maps overlay of the winning city, Istanbul, the team got to work trying the speed and layout accuracy of the tool.

After The Sinking City releases, the team plan to give the tool away for free for others to use.
 
"Hopefully once The Sinking City comes out, we can release the tech for free so other devs, educational institutions or even hobbyists can use it. The tool has been invaluable to our game's development so I can only imagine what others could potentially create with it." - Wael Amr, Frogwares CEO

A new video for The Sinking City which is about 'The Art Of Visual Storytelling'.

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Stories can be told in different ways - and there is a lot video games can learn about it from other media. In our sixth update, we want to show you a few visual techniques we use to tell our story in The Sinking City!

I saw two lovecraft inspired games at Gamescom and The Sinking City was one of them.

Frogwares, who are developing The Sinking City, might be better known for their series of Sherlock Holmes games, of which they made several in the past. It is this type of investigation game that they wanted to port to the world of Lovecraft. The focus of the game is therefore on the story, taking place in an open world, where you are looking for evidence, talk to witnesses, cross-reference the evidence, solve puzzles and solve crimes, with some combat thrown in as well.
The game takes place in the partially flooded city of Oakmont, which has several public facilities, such as: city hall, the hospital, the police station, the library, etc. In these places you can cross-reference the evidence you have collected with the archives in these public facilities.

A new cinematic trailer for The Sinking city has been made available.

21/08/2018: Kiev, Ukraine - The Sinking City team has released two videos which are currently being showcased during their gamescom 2018 presentations.

First, a new CGI trailer shows us how the forces that roam in the festering city of Oakmont sink into a broken conscious, playing tricks on one's mind over, and over, and over, and...

Then a 12-minute narrated gameplay demo dives head first into the gracefully rotting world of Oakmont, looking at a few of the investigative tools at your disposal, and a bitter taste of the warped, nefarious stories to come. In this investigation, we're trying to help a rather hesitant witness. Someone, or something, has promised to keep this poor souls mouth sewn shut, figuratively and literally.

Here is the cinematic trailer:

And the gameplay demo (I can't get the orignal one to load, so here is a copy from CrustyManMeat):

The Sinking City got a new gameplay trailer called A Close Shave.

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It starts with the nick of a razor blade, a small pool of blood forming on the surface of the skin. From there, it only gets weirder, my thoughts are a whirlpool that drags me down, into a world, unlike anything I’ve ever known. It all starts with the nick of a razor….

The Sinking City is coming to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 21, 2019.

The Sinking City will release March 21st 2019.

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A new teaser trailer for The Sinking City.

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Can you hear that voice in your head getting louder and louder? That's me. This is not the last time we will talk... Taking place in the 1920s, The Sinking City is a game of adventure and investigation set in an open world inspired by the works of the famous American horror author H.P. Lovecraft. You will step into the shoes of a private investigator who arrives in the city of Oakmont Massachusetts - a city suffering from unprecedented floods of supernatural origins. You must uncover the source of whatever has taken possession of the city - and the minds of its inhabitants.

The devs for The Sinking City were interviewed by Wccftech.

The Frogwares blog says The Sinking City is the biggest game you’ve ever made. What has been the most challenging part of the game’s development so far?

Definitely the city itself. The Sinking City is our first open world game, we’ve never done anything of that size and density before. I mean, in Sherlock Holmes The Devil’s Daughter we had semi-open world locations, they were relatively big but still separated by loading screens. And you know, it’s much easier to create a few different disjointed areas, than build one gigantic interconnected ecosystem.

We were quite staggered that building a city is not as easy as drawing streets and placing buildings. A city must have a soul, made of different districts, intricate urban planning, various architectural styles – it all must make sense and feel alive. Thankfully, our architect was up to the task, after months of research and a field trip to Boston. Our goal is to create a believable city that could exist in the 1920s New England. Of course, it’s a fictional city, but it still needs to feel real (here’s a dev diary on how we actually build that, if you are interested).

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Thanks Farflame!

Gamewatcher reports that the developers of The Sinking City have shared some new details about the game.

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Lore-wise, the content of the game is created in a way to fit in with H.P. Lovecraft's established canon. As Oganesyan highlighted, the author generally focused on overarching themes while keeping specific descriptions and events often vague. With regards to an estimated release date or pricing scheme, the developers have not decided on either yet, and more content is still being added to the game, however we know that The Sinking City will be released on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

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A new update on The Sinking City shows off some gameplay.

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Welcome to our fifth The Sinking City update video. With GDC and EGX just around the corner, we are preparing to showcase the game for the first time to the public at these events. In this video, we wanted to show you the "in's and out's" of making a public demo - the highs, the lows, and the temptations that go with it. -------------------------------------------------
The Sinking City is a Lovecraft-inspired investigation game, which takes place in the 1920s Massachusetts, United States. You'll step into the shoes of a private detective who arrives in the fictional city of Oakmont, suffering from unprecedented floods of clearly supernatural origins.

DSOGaming report on Frogwares demonstration of city generation which will feature in The Sinking City which is a lovecraftian open world detective game.

Frogwares has shared a video showing the City Generator tech demo for its upcoming Lovecraftian game, The Sinking City. With this tool, Frogwares is able to generate a rich, visually varied, open-world city in merely a few moments. What’s really cool here is that when The Sinking City releases, Frogwares is planning on sharing this tool with everyone.

As such, theoretically, players will be able to create their own cities with this tool. And if the game is open to more mods, it will provide an experience that extends beyond the game. Hear that EA? No need for microtransactions or anything like that.

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