The Sinking City 2 Wiki: Game Guide & Reference Hub

What Is The Sinking City 2?

Wikipedia and the official store pages agree on the canon: a singleplayer third-person survival horror game developed and published by Frogwares, inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and sequel to The Sinking City from 2019.

The story is standalone. You play occult adventurer Calvin Rafferty, whose failed dreaming ritual left his partner Faye trapped in the Dreamlands, and the campaign chases her rescue through an evacuated, flooded Arkham.

Development began in January 2023 with the stated intent to take the series in a new direction — away from open-world detective work and toward survival horror.

Release, Platforms, and Editions

The game launched August 18, 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store, and GOG. Editions price at $49.99 Standard, $54.99 Deluxe, and $59.99 Premium.

The pre-order bonus on all editions was the Chthonic Arsenal weapon pack — the Shale Mary handgun, the Breakwater shotgun, and the Tektite Tommy SMG, each with a unique firing trait. Deluxe adds the Arkham Field Kit with outfits, consumables, and three Dream Essence; Premium adds the Holloway Manor side investigation of roughly two hours plus 24-hour early access.

A Kickstarter campaign ran before release, and its stretch goals added a Shoggoth boss battle, extra secrets and environmental puzzles, and a returning reimagined location from the first game.

Core Systems

The official key features describe the loop: fight to survive, explore the decaying city by foot and by boat, scavenge and manage what you find, and choose to investigate further — optional cases and puzzles unlock secrets, upgrades, and lore.

Four difficulty settings run from story mode up to survivor, and investigation difficulty is adjustable separately from combat difficulty. Accessibility options include audio cues, HUD toggles, and the removal of rapid button presses.

The flood itself is a threat: monsters can raise the floodwaters, some drain your sanity, and unseen things ambush from beneath the surface. Retreating to come back better prepared is a designed strategy, not a failure.

PC Tech Snapshot

PCGamingWiki records the engine as Unreal Engine 5.8.0 with Hardware Lumen ray tracing for global illumination and reflections, TSR and DLSS 4.5 upscaling with Multi-Frame Generation, and FSR planned but not yet available at launch.

Minimum specs target 1080p at 30fps on Low: an i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600X, a GTX 1070 or RX 5700 with 8GB VRAM, 16GB RAM, Windows 11, and a 70GB SSD. The recommended tier targets 1440p at 60fps on Medium with an i5-14600K or Ryzen 5 7600X, an RTX 4070 Ti or RX 7900 XT, and 32GB RAM.

HDR was absent at launch; Frogwares has queued it for free post-launch support, alongside the planned FSR support.

Scores at a Glance

At collection time — two days after launch — Metacritic showed a Metascore of 79 from 35 critics, while Steam sat at 90% positive across 441 user reviews. OpenCritic readings varied between 80 and 82 depending on the source and snapshot.

Critic consensus praised the Lovecraftian atmosphere and rewarding exploration, and flagged corny dialogue, stilted cutscenes, and launch-window technical issues as the weak spots.

The Wiki Landscape

No official first-party wiki exists; the Steam page and Frogwares’ own site are the authoritative sources. Community coverage is spread across the Sinking City Fandom wiki, PCGamingWiki for technical facts, and several independent fan wikis launched around release.

Treat fan wikis with care in these first weeks: one misspells the protagonist as Kelvin (official: Calvin Rafferty), and the Lovecraft Fandom wiki still labels the game upcoming. Cross-check anything load-bearing against official pages — or against our own pages, which cite what was verified and mark what was not.

Edition and DLC Map

The complete edition structure as verified across Steam, Epic, GOG, and the console stores. Everything bundles down to two DLC products, which keeps the upgrade math simple.

Holloway Manor is the only gameplay-bearing extra — a roughly two-hour standalone investigation rewarding the Bucking Bronco revolver — while the Field Kit is cosmetics and consumables.