Frogwares is less than a month away from releasing their Lovecraftian detective game The Sinking City, which slithers onto PS4, Xbox One and PC on March 21st. Their latest dev diary goes into detail on just how deep that detective gameplay gets. The game will flat refuse to hold your hand or guide you by the nose; you have Charles Reid's trusty notebook and supernatural sense of retro-cognition, but other than that it's up to you to unravel the unspeakable eldritch mystery in Oakmont. Frogwares' "mind palace" mechanic from their Sherlock Holmes series returns, but it too will work in shades of gray, with no clear direction on whether you're doing the so-called "right" thing.
I'm getting a heavy "Shadow Over Innsmouth" vibe from this trailer; even some of the inhabitants look like the fish-people hybrids from that classic Lovecraft tale. I'm also excited by the gameplay, as it looks like a healthy mix between combat, supernatural elements and a truly open-ended sleuth-em-up. Lovecraft tales are always about uncovering knowledge that is better left unknown. After last year's painfully linear and scripted Call of Cthulhu (GN score 6.5), The Sinking City looks like just what I want out of a high profile Lovecraft game.
