Finished my second playthrough on The Sinking City. It's such a great game. A hidden gem and the best Lovecraft-adaptation as of yet.
The writing, the lore and the world building is phenomenal and makes up for the clunky gameplay and combat. I love the detective work you do in this game, piecing together the clues and digging deeper into the games twisted story.
It deals with a lot of disturbing themes, such as cannibalism, suicide, incest, murder and xenophobia. Everything takes place in a believable context due to the developers excellent writing, and they never shy away from the atrocities that some of these people commit in this god forsaken city. It's very rare to see so many controversial topics play out in a video game all at once but it all adds up to the brilliant Lovecraftian feel of the game. You can really feel the sinister vibe looming over the city and its inhabitants.
The Sinking city is mostly based on Shadows over Innsmouth but takes inspiration from practically all of Lovecrafts notable stories, such as Dagon, The Rats in the Walls, Herbert West, Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness and more. The game is shock full of references to its plots, characters, themes and lore.
The Sinking City is one of favorite games of this gen. It's so immersive and atmospheric, and to unravel the cities mysteries is very exciting. It's like the Silent Hill we never got, except it's based on H.P Lovecraft instead of an original work (although SH borrows a lot from Lovecraft). The voice acting is spot on, especially from the guy who does the protagonist Charles Reed. Very good work indeed.
