Is The Sinking City 2 worth $49.99?
Short version: if you came for survival horror in a Lovecraft playground, the demo says yes. If you came expecting more of the 2019 detective game, slow down. Here's the longer version.
Worth it for horror and Lovecraft fans — the free demo people judged it on is no longer on Steam (checked September 26, 2026), so don't pay for Premium unless you want the permanent content.
$49.99 at launch, no discount. The demo was free and genuinely good while it lasted — Steam has since delisted it (checked September 26, 2026) — which is why the launch-week reactions were so confident.
The case for buying day one
- The demo was genuinely good. r/survivalhorror called it "shockingly excellent" — that's not faint praise, and the demo sells the sequel's core loop properly.
- It's a real survival horror, not a walking sim. Resource management, retreat-and-rearm fights, shortcuts, optional cases that upgrade you. The systems in the description are the kind that make horror replayable.
- Supporting Frogwares is a rare clean conscience. A Kyiv studio that fought its old publisher in court for the IP and shipped a $50 game through a war. That's worth something.
- Lovecraft fans get rarity. Faithful Lovecraft adaptations with real budgets are scarce. This one is set in Arkham, the genre's home turf.
The case for waiting
- No launch discount. Frogwares games do go on sale. The first Sinking City has been heavily discounted for years. Patient buyers will save real money in a few months.
- Genre switch risk. The devs themselves say it: The Sinking City was a detective game, the sequel is survival horror. If you loved the investigation half of 2019's game, you might bounce on the new emphasis on dread and scarcity.
- Day-one patch roulette. Nobody knows the launch build's state yet — reviews hadn't dropped as of Aug 17, and the game is a big open city on three platforms. Waiting a week for player reports is cheap insurance.
- No Game Pass. If your backlog math only works at $30 or under, this waits anyway.
My actual advice
- Watch the demo footage instead. It used to be a free evening on Steam before the app was pulled; the first two hours of flooded Arkham are all over YouTube, and if that doesn't grab you, you have your answer.
- Survival-horror regulars: buy Standard at launch if the demo landed for you. $49.99 is the going rate for this genre's big swings.
- Detective-game purists: wait for reviews and watch how much investigation survived the genre shift before spending.
- Don't buy Premium for the 24-hour head start. That's paying $10 to be early for one day. The permanent extras (Holloway Manor mission, the revolver, outfits) are the only reason to consider it, and they're cosmetic-adjacent.
See it on Steam (demo delisted) →
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