Amateur Recommendation Hour: The Sinking City

Today’s recommendation is a game that, while rough around the edges, is one that I felt the passion and care put into it was unmistakeable.

The Sinking City, developed by Ukrainian team Frogwares, centers around protagonist Charles Reed. A World War I veteran turned private eye, drawn to the town of Oakmont Massachusetts for reasons he does not know, only to find the town being submerged underwater and being taken back by the sea.

The game plays as somewhat of a cross between LA Noire and Silent Hill. A huge town to roam around, taking you from investigation to investigation, trying to uncover the many dark secrets of the town and its inhabitants. It's worth noting that the combat encounters, shooting mechanics are stiff and clunky in comparison to other third person games with shooting elements in them. You'll find yourself fighting with some of its awkward controls to boot. As someone who can get easily frustrated myself I thought this was a very important thing worth mentioning. I try to keep things in my recommendations more positive but that doesn't mean I won't be calling them like I see them and being critical when I feel I need to be.

My interpretations of this work are mutually intelligible with a lot of HP Lovecraft’s works. Humanity’s truly tiny place in this wide and expansive universe as well as their inability and sometimes downright refusal to break their own self destructive cycles. And while it doesn't exactly innovate or differentiate itself from other Lovecraft inspired pieces, that doesn't mean that one can't derive meaning from it or say that it's merely a copy of previous works of fiction. Merely that it's not necessarily original, and that's not a bad thing with so much fiction on the market in any given medium in the modern era.