Game Review--The Sinking City (Switch)

"It always begins with a great flood.  Then... the threat rises with the sea.  The sea is all that divides our world from the one below."

--Harriet Dough, The Sinking City

An isolated city that does not appear on maps and that has somewhat recently been the site of a massive "Flood," Oakmont serves as the central location for The Sinking City, a Lovecraftian cosmic horror title that succeeds at tackling the subgenre but fails to provide strong gameplay outside of its detective segments.  In light of this, it is far more of a detective investigation game than it is action horror or survival horror; the horror elements emerge more from the concepts of hypothetical meaninglessness, apocalyptic destruction, supernatural forces besides the expected eldritch being(s), and isolation of Oakmont.  Cthulhu is not even the grand antagonist.  In fact, it is the "Dreamer's Hidden Daughter," or Cthulhu's daughter, that the game focuses on instead of Cthulhu (who dreams in the underwater city of R'yleh as he awaits his release).  Even so, much of the game deals with the human and non-eldritch supernatural forces that clash in Oakmont, all as many of the humans struggle to adapt to the enormous amounts of water.  Multiple endings and multiple ways to react to events or people could incentivize replays, but the building cosmic horror and the extreme autonomy forced upon the player as a private investigator are by far the strongest aspects of the game, which could take 20-40 hours depending on how observant the player is and how many side quests he or she completes.

Production Values

Contrasting with the excellence of the atmosphere and worldbuilding, the graphics are completely lackluster at almost all times.  The dialogue animations are sometimes out of sync with the sounds of their voices, grass pops into the foreground as you walk forward, and the same creature might appear on both sides of a fence as if the fence was not there.  Sound, being a major aspect of a largely dialogue-driven game, therefore has the power to salvage the otherwise mediocre production values, and, thankfully, the voice acting and creature noises are handled more competently.  However, it is the writing that stands out even more.  Everything from the haunting effects of Oakmont's madness epidemic to the racial prejudices of the area, which are shifted to the Innsmouthers in an ahistorical move, are conveyed clearly.  The themes and the utter freedom to proceed--or look intensely for overlooked clues--as fast as one can discover who to talk to, where to go, or how to assemble clues into "deductions" (the game erroneously treats inferences as logically accurate deductions instead of unproven, perception-based guesses) are the strongest parts instead of anything having to do with the visual and audio production values.

Gameplay

The Sinking City is a very slow game.  I do not mean this in a negative way; I only mean to clarify that this is not an action game by any means.  Yes, there is occasionally a chance to use firearms, Molotov cocktails, and stick grenades, the latter two of which can be crafted using various items that players might come across.  Still, the majority of the game is spent interrogating people, gathering evidence, and very literally piecing together clues to reach conclusions about the events at Oakmont.  You even have to use addresses provided in dialogue or notes to find specific street intersections in particular neighborhoods, or sometimes use police or newspaper records to figure out where to go, to make progress.  Largely autonomous investigation takes a clear precedence over combat.

There are five districts in Oakmont that can be explored during cases, with a handful of diving sections thrown in for some of the mandatory cases related to the main story.  These sequences are narratively important, but the locations themselves cannot be revisited.  Since backtracking is very time consuming thanks to the need to often use slow boats to cross flooded streets, you might as well try to work on multiple cases in a given area once you reach it.  Many of the case descriptions simply provide an address, usually an intersection of two streets, that must be identified on the pause menu's map and then explored.  Actually looking around at a given spot gathers clues and can trigger a special mechanic.

Upon visiting and inspecting some of these locations, you might have to use a mechanic called retrocognition, a supernaturally enhanced ability to reconstruct past events in the protagonist's mind.  Anywhere from two to around four events must be put in the right order to have enough information to describe what happened to whoever assigned the case.  Not every investigation tool is as natural or well-implemented as retrocognition, unfortunately.  The written records at the police station or other places, which must be searched for specific details using a filter with three categories, can occasionally require a practically random set of search criteria to find the necessary clue, although this kind of gameplay feature is very authentic for a game about a private investigator and truly does reinforce the focus on letting the play figure out many things on their own (of course, no one knows anything apart from reason, even the inferences made in the game and why inferences are not true deductive knowledge).  One note prompting a records examination near the very end of the main story is so utterly vague and unhelpful that I had to look up the search filter combination just to beat the game.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A private investigator named Charles Reed comes to the drowning city of Oakmont, the streets holding water after a recent flood that the locals refer to as if it has a supernatural cause.  Charles has traced an outbreak of madness and visions or nightmares of a sleeping giant here, and the inhabitants find themselves confronting literal monsters in dreams and visions, as well as while awake.  Mr. Throgmorton, one of the town's most prominent members, wants to find his missing son Albert, who reportedly was found in a lifeboat speaking gibberish.  Albert was part of a geological operation to discover information about "the Flood" and the visions, which are possibly connected, the visions and accompanying madness being of great interest to Charles.

Intellectual Content

The standard Lovecraftian relationship between sensory limitations and manipulation, where hallucinations and sensory perceptions blur or sensory experiences shift suddenly, is made into a gameplay mechanic with the sanity feature, where looking at monsters or certain objects lowers the sanity meter and can trigger apparent hallucinations.  Because no one can prove that their sensory perceptions as a whole correspond to the actual external world, no one can actually prove that visual or audio stimuli are or are not hallucinated.  It is for this reason that one's sensory perceptions are not a valid indicator of "sanity."  One could perceive nonexistent objects in the external world and still be rational, such as by rightly believing that there is no necessary connection between a general sensory experiences and an outside world of matter--for sensory hallucinations are involuntary, but irrationality can be voluntary thrown aside.  Rationality--someone's ability to understand and use the laws of logic, even if applying them to things that do not concern the external world--is the only actual standard of sanity or madness.

The only inherent, genuine, universally attainable knowledge is that pertaining to logical axioms, deductive proofs, introspective states of consciousness, and other things that can be rationalistically derived from them (such as that absolute certainty is found in any deduction without assumptions or any introspection, not just in the basic recognition of one's own existence).  For the most part, the only knowledge that comes from sensory experiences is that one is currently having a sensory experience, not that the experience corresponds to anything beyond one's immaterial consciousness.  Because he is assuming that his sensory perceptions are accurate and that plenty of hearsay he encounters is true, Charles Reed is not truly making deductions, which grant absolute certainty, when he pieces together the clues he finds.  He even chooses between two different, exclusive conclusions at some points, and yet neither of the conclusions could be proven because they involve unprovable ideas about things like the intentions of other people.

Conclusion

Of all the cosmic horror games I have played and reviewed thus far, including Call of Cthulhu, the only one that matches or surpasses the thoroughly Lovecraftian worldbuilding of The Sinking City is Omen Exitio: Plague.  For all of its visual issues, The Sinking City not only shows a somewhat unique setting with a far higher emphasis on player autonomy than is normal, but it honors many key characteristics of Lovecraftian cosmic horror from start to finish.  Strange dreams of a superhuman entity, a sunken eldritch prison, cults and conspiracies, tentacled beasts, and the worsening hallucinations or confusing sensory experiences of the protagonist make this game almost perfectly Lovecraftian on a thematic level, just without many attempts to draw from the idiotic metaphysical/epistemological irrationalism that has become culturally associated with Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  The Sinking City's non-investigative gameplay is the weak link, but the rest is a triumph for this subgenre of gaming and general entertainment/art.

Content:
 1.  Violence:  Fighting only occurs very sporadically unless the player intentionally seeks out very specific combat zones.  Shooting or physically striking the creatures does involve blood, but their bodies vanish into a mysterious mist-like substance.
 2.  Profanity:  Words like "damn" or "bastard" are used on occasion.
 3.  Nudity:  In some houses, nude male statues can be seen, and the penises are visible.  Likewise, statues of naked or partly naked women are in some homes.