The Sinking City

I don't care what people say about the mechanics. Yeah, it's annoying sometimes, but it's actually a really good game worth checking out if you like Lovecraftian horror.

TLDR
The Sinking City feels like a game created by authors and artists, then coded by monkeys. If you’re looking for a Lovecraftian detective experience, it’s absolutely worth playing. The atmosphere, story, character dialogue, and voice acting are all phenomenal. The moral choices are genuine dilemmas rather than simple good/evil prompts. If Lovecraft is what you’re here for, buy it.
That said, the positives end there. The game objectively feels terrible to play. Your character controls like a tank on ice skates. Combat is easily the worst part: the moment you engage an “enemy,” your sanity drops and you’re hit with a disorienting fisheye lens effect. As someone who does not get motion sickness, the effect is extremely nauseating and cannot be disabled.
The resource management system makes no sense and feels like a chore. Rather than make crafting resources scarce, they are abundant, as chests refill when you walk away. You just have an extremely limited inventory, making it a minor inconvenience in between fights rather than something you actually have to manage.
Environments also suffer from repetition. There are basically three interior layout templates, all some variation of a three-story building; but the interior design team does impressive work disguising the sameness and making each space feel distinct.
All of these negatives only highlight how well the game nails its story and atmosphere. The Sinking City is clunky, jank, and at times outright annoying to play… yet its narrative and world-building are so good that it’s still worth it for fans of cosmic horror.

What happens when Lovecraft's works collide into one comprehensive universe, then mix with further occult myths like the Golem of Prague and undead Mayan? The Sinking City is exactly that, a rough but charming melting pot of cosmic horror and esotericism by the underfunded AA Ukrainian studio Frogwares.
There are so many problems with its gameplay, especially repetitive combat against the same 4 types of enemy, the over-reliance on the crafting system and the overused repetitive level layouts. Yet despite all that, the city of Oakmont and its eerie but memorable stories carry such a great atmosphere that I'd recommend this game to anyone who loves the weird fiction genre. There's something truly special about being thrown into a bizarre, decaying but fully believable world and stumbling upon its strange characters and moments that make you pause and question things. And that's why The Sinking City is one of the most authentic Lovecraft games for me, an imperfect but truly unforgettable experience.

I almost got put off from the start by slightly wonky combat, but decided to power through and see what this game is really about - because killing things clearly isn't the main attraction here. I'm very glad I did, because it turned out to be one of the most atmospheric, chilling horrors/thrillers I've had the pleasure to play.

There's an omnipresent sense of dread in it, which is why I find the name so fitting - it's a "sinking feeling" of things going from bad to increasingly harrowing levels of "WORSE". Fear of the Unknown is the strongest of them all, according to Lovecraft - and this game capitalizes on that pretty damn well. It doesn't shock you with predictable gore or jump-scares. Instead - it seeps into your being as something you can't quite identify, yet find delightfully terrifying.

Unraveling the threads of its story while playing detective is the core gameplay thing here, and is quite gripping, just because of how original and unpredictable the writing is.

This was an entirely random find which turned out as a hidden gem !

This game has been kicking around on my bucket list for a few years, now. It looked really interesting, but I was in the middle of other games at the time and it slipped my mind. Now that SC2 has been announced it's high time that I get the kick in the ass, that I deserve, for not playing it yet. :P
Anyway...
I really enjoyed game. I've always wanted an open world lovecraftian game. Also having guns in the game felt appropriate since there's monsters in it. Oh noes :O, monsters what ever should I do? Run around, screaming in circles? No, shoot the bastards already!
The solving of mysteries to get places was a fun angle too. Being the only one to know something feels kinda special, in an already mysterious world. I also like how sometimes the only answer in the whole city is a tiny piece of text found in a books at a library or found in an archive. As they say: the devil is in the detail.
As far as the story and atmosphere goes, they too were satisfying. It's your basic lovecraftianism at its best. You have a gloomy end of the world, that is yet still intriguing and only YOU can change things but always at a sacrifice.
The graphics are a bit dated, but who cares. The lovecraftian themes still look cool. I've seen worse.
I can't wait for the next game now.

The Sinking City is a fevered plunge into a nightmare city, drenched in noir and interesting kind of horror. Not fear, exactly—more like revulsion, a deep-seated unease at the sheer wrongness of things. The city is damp, swollen, festering. The kind of place where the walls sweat and something with too many limbs might be waiting just around the corner. It's Lovecraft way of body horror: mold, mucus, slick organic growths spreading over brick and flesh alike.
The game channels The Shadow over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness, with its grotesque hybrid creatures straight out of The Call of Cthulhu. For my wife, the fish-headed monstrosities were a dealbreaker, too unnerving to continue. For me, however, the grotesque hybrids and other zootropic NPCs were a plus — the essence of Lovecraftian terror, the kind that disturbs without ever fully revealing itself. I’m not a huge fan of the writer himself, but I do appreciate his cultural influence.
The gameplay, though, is a little bit mess. Combat is clumsy, and the open-world mechanics feel shallow, leaving the city more like a forgotten diorama than a living place. The story hits familiar detective beats, but lacks the depth of its Lovecraftian inspirations. It’s a game that struggles to live up to its potential but still offers a raw, unsettling atmosphere that will haunt the right kind of player — if they’re willing to endure its flaws.

Pretty good lovecraft game, atmosphere is great, the lovecraftian weirdness is on point, here and there a little janky and lacks some polish but nothing you can't get over if you want some crazy outer gods stuff