Diving into ‘The Sinking City 2’ | 09/09/26

Hello all and welcome to AI and Games. This week is a weird issue: I’m currently trapped under a mountain of work as I prepare to head off for an on-site client visit next week. So I haven’t had too much time to focus on writing up a larger piece for the site. As such, I figured why not review a couple more games that were sent our way that I’ve been playing during my recent travels! Hopefully regular programming will resume in a couple weeks time.

But before that, some news!

Note: One tiny announcement. Decision emails for the AI and Games Conference 2026 will start going out later today. My apologies for the delay in getting them out there: we’ve been overwhelmed by the number of submissions this year and needed more time to agree on what’s being accepted. All that said, we have an amazing line-up for this years event and I look forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks!

Review keys for each game provided by the publisher courtesy of Keymailer.

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Headlines

A couple of quick stories worth sharing with you…

GPT Now Creates Steam Asset Flips With the announcement of OpenAI’s GPT-6, the company is currently dealing with the blowback from how their much lauded new frontier model might not be anywhere near as impressive as first advertised. However, for us the key thing to point out is whether it would actually have any impact on our work in game development. With engine providers like Unity and Unreal now offering hooks for developers to integrate these models into their workflow, is it going to cut the mustard? It’s really hard to tell given the demo shown looks like something I could achieve with a procedural generation algorithm, an asset pack and I dunno, an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon? The video is below, you be the judge. I worry more about the ongoing waves of slop filling up the storefronts as a result of such endeavours.

Saber Interactive Haven’t Learned Their PR Lesson Despite becoming headline news for many a gaming website and newsletter, Saber Interactive haven’t quite figured out that their AI take is perhaps bad for business. CCO Tim Willits stated in an interview with PC Gamer that “there’s always some dust up” when PR snafu’s turn into gamer outrage, and they have no intention to change their PR strategy at this time. Time will tell of course, but conflating negative sentiment with Generative AI versus say Epic store exclusivity (as he does in the interview) strikes me as an apples/oranges comparison. For me the worst comment was when Willits said that with studio leadership "sometimes we 'say what we mean' too much". In an era where trust in games studios and their opaque practices continues to be low, suggesting your happy to get rid of people and replacing them with AI might prove to be a bigger issue long term.

But Also Saber Know Who is Really in Charge because after Willits said Saber are exploring all of these ideas and that someone will make “the Half-Life 2 of AI”, he then made clear that all of the big licensed projects they’re working on - which includes the likes of Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 3, Jurassic Park: Survival and Hellraiser: Revival - will not have any Generative AI in them at all. Referring to Rideshare as an isolated experiment in whether it can be used in specific use cases. The real takeaway from this is that they are no doubt contractually obligated by many of the licensors to not use Generative AI as part of the productions. This is notably the case with Warhammer owners Games Workshop, who have made clear that Generative AI is not permitted in any and all works related to their IP.

Humankind II Devs Challenge the Narrative After receiving accusations that their recent Gamescom announcement trailer was potential AI slop, the devs came out with a behind-the-scenes video to highlight no, this was a lot of effort by very real people. Another indicator both in the lack of trust many gamers now have in Generative AI adoption in games, as well as a lack of ability to discern slop from sweat.

Arm’s Approach Towards Mobile-First AI I figured the latest feature by Lewis Packwood over at GamesIndustry.biz (hey Lewis!) was worth a share. A longer conversation about the company’s broader plans both in providing tools, on-board AI compute, and their own integrated upscaling technologies.

Yet Another Zombie Survivors

Awesome Games Studio / Steam, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series, Nintendo Switch

In the past year or so I’ve started asking myself the question of whether I actually like Survivor-likes / Bullet-Heaven games? I’ve played several in the past couple of years, each building off the back of Vampire Survivors into to add something new or spicy to the proceedings. But there’s part of me that’s often questioning whether their appeal is solely attached to my lizard brain enjoying the numbers go up. The appeal of Vampire Survivors and its ilk for me often comes from the depth of strategy that can emerge from seemingly simple concepts - it’s how this genre overlaps in my brain with the likes of Earth Defense Force and Dynasty Warriors. While that depth is often provided courtesy of unlock trees, I often enjoy more from the considerations during the gameplay itself.

Earlier this year I mentioned how Deep Rock Galactic Survivor sits comfortably in my list of favourite games played in 2026 thus far, and it was for this exact reason. An early-access title that had received a full 1.0 launch that had figured out how to build a lot of depth into its gameplay while also leaving a lot of challenge in the long-term progression. So I figured let’s try out Awesome Games Studios Yet Another Zombie Survivors which also received it’s full 1.0 launch not that long ago. It’s worth mentioning that Awesome Games Studio, a small indie outfit from Poland, has spent much of the last 20 years building lightweight games built on popular concepts, ranging from tower-defence to roguelikes. So it’s no surprise that they apply this approach to a Survivor-like.

The game revolves around building up long-term progression not just in weapons and skills for a given character, but also for each character and how they intersect with one another. Each run starts with the player going into battle with a single character, with each level-up triggering either upgrades for existing weapons and unlocking other ones over time. This also has the potential to trigger upgrades of specific weapons into more complex and powerful variants, all of which being unlocked for adoption courtesy of spending skill-points accrued during a run and used in the ‘camp’ between sessions.

Though the big innovation of the game is the ability to ‘rescue’ additional characters during a run, with a maximum of three in a given squad. This is where the games depth and strategy begin to take shape, as you focus not just on which weapons to unlock, but also which characters - and their associated abilities - compliment one another in ways that will yield more stability. Do we focus on having the varieties of elemental damage overlap on each other, have a healer support a munitions-heavy build, or add melee specialism to ensure you keep enemies down at close range. Alternatively, you can bank the cash/xp you would have got from a second character and instead work to continue to reinforce your existing squad.

With a collection of different levels, enemy archetypes and even boss battles the game injects plenty of variety into each run. When you have three bosses looming down on you, each with their own attack patterns and triggers, it really adds some spice! There are also level-specific encounters and challenges that are important to remember and work around that provide some additional layers to gameplay that can sometimes be exploited to full effect. Whether it be the trains screaming across the track in the city, or the battle-royale-esque decontamination circle that pops up periodically in the research lab.

One criticism I do have is that the art style, which in many respects harks back to the studios Xbox Live Arcade roots is often hard to parse. As masses of zombies descend upon you it can be difficult to track the projectiles, elemental effects, projected boss attack arcs and much more as they all overlap on screen at once. I use the options to change a lot of the UI overlay colours given my colour blindness simply couldn’t keep up at times, but also the grey and gritty art style just makes for tougher viewing particularly on a portable platform like the Steam Deck.

Overall all of this comes together in ways that are largely quite satisfying, but even after around 15 hours it still didn’t quite scratch the itch I have for Survivor-likes in the way that I’d hoped. I found that in some rounds I was drifting and losing interest during the game, rather than continuing to feel engaged as the timer runs down. This is for me often the biggest challenge with this genre, in that the deepest strategy and decision-making (or even the perception of it) is often at the start of the run rather than towards the end - it’s something that the Vampire Crawlers spinoff addresses very well. I have actually died more than once because I simply stopped paying attention to what’s happening. All that said, there’s tons of content in there and if it scratches the itch for you, then this game will more than satisfy you.

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The Sinking City 2

Frogwares / Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series

Every now and then you see a developer try for a change of pace as they continue working on a given IP, but rarely do you see this kind of transition happen as soon as the second entry. The original Sinking City from 2019 is a 3rd-person semi-open-world detective game as protagonist Charles Reed attempts to solve mysteries in the city of Oakmont, Massachusetts, travelling by boat to reach each district of the city that will help in his quest. Meanwhile this recently released sequel is completely standalone and rather than continuing the existing narrative and build on the established characters, it moves setting, changes perspective, and even shifts genre along the way.

Instead the The Sinking City 2 transitions the franchise from a slightly creepy action-adventure with Lovecraftian themes into a Resident Evil 2 [Remake] clone that leans heavily into survival horror. In a story completely separate from the original, Calvin Rafferty must now carve his way through the flooded streets of Arkham, Massachusetts to find the cure to his partner Faye’s somewhat supernatural ailment. Anyone familiar with Capcom’s recent efforts in remaking earlier entries of the Resident Evil franchise will be at home here. You can expect much of the same of resource management, tight corridors, intense combat, item crafting, and the need to assess whether fighting or fleeing in the moment is the right way to go. While I lean heavily into this comparison I say so with praise. To attempt to mimic that which Capcom make look almost effortless at times in the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 4 especially is no small task - particularly when as noted in the games loading screens this game was built by a team of developers living through the ongoing war in Ukraine. While there are the odd blemishes, I found I could push past and forgive many of them given the core game itself was otherwise very compelling.

But to tar this game solely as a Resident Evil clone would be to dismiss many of the flourishes that Frogwares brings to the table. The game world richly constructed as a mixture of 1920’s decadence and prestige that is subsequently infected by Lovecraftian horrors from another world. Players can wander out to find more investigations off the beaten path. The game introduces introduces a series of smaller subplots and side missions that need completed throughout the main story, each laced with a variety of hints as to how to complete them. This leads to your investigation board where you can lay hints out and connect them to one another, thus providing a different approach to piecing ideas together than simply scrolling through text and figuring out what it all means.

One of the cheapest but nonetheless effective tricks that hosting a survival horror game in a sinking city presents is that many of the environments you visit are flooded on the ground level, and this presents a situation where encounters ranging from individual enemies to larger sequences can simply spawn out of the water. It’s an effective mechanism to inject dread into the process as you wander into an environment knowing that a flicked switch or story beat will have enemies emerge from the depths. Though in some instances you can see them bubbling away below the surface and try to catch them out in advance. Combat is engaging and comes in a variety of flavours. From smaller critters that skitter around cover to attack when you least expect, to rushes of zombie-like entities that force you to keep moving, and more monstrous and deformed entities resulting in more strategic and methodical showdowns. Many enemies have specific weakpoints that maximise damage, and like Resident Evil 2 they make it difficult for you to exploit them. Often it’s best to move around, find an opening, get some hits and keep going. Weapons feel good to use, and while many feel fairly weak at the start you can gradually build up your arsenal to feel more substantial, though not quite at the same level of ‘badass killing machine’ that some Resident Evil’s accidentally achieve.

My only two complaints here is that first the melee options feel really weak and while we don’t want them to be overpowering they really lack teeth - especially the Dead Space inspired stomp. Secondly, given that the game world is built in segments that are loaded in and out of gameplay, I have noticed on more than occasion the secret to being overwhelmed is to flee back to a safer area. This is fine of course - the game even has a convenient narrative justification for safe rooms - but I noticed that enemies often jog back to pre-determined locations in the map after you leave, and in some cases you can even watch them do it. It breaks the immersion, and having even a brief lull where they pause and then stumble off somewhere would make for a more realistic reaction. This is a very minor quibble, but this was undoubtedly the biggest thing where the gamer/developer balance in my head skewed heavily to the dev.

The game moves at a decent pace, and while cheesy in parts I generally found the story, characters, and narrative overall quite engaging. It retains both an emotional core but also a more critical sense of grounding and pseudorealism even as the world around us descends ever further into darkness. The city of Arkham feels like an environment rife with opportunity for further storytelling. I mean, it is lifted directly from H.P. Lovecraft’s original works, but Frogwares do a great job of making it feel like a place that carries a lot of secrets throughout, and if there’s a chance to revisit this locale and tell more stories in this space I’d be keen to see it. In the meantime the game does a great job of providing replayability with challenges and unlockables that can then exploited in future runs. Like another survival horror franchise that I can’t quite put my finger on…

As mentioned at the top, The Sinking City 2 borrows from the modern Resident Evil 2 in many respects, but it does so to craft something that is distinct and worth exploring on its own merit. In a year when I still hold Resident Evil Requiem as one of the best games of the year, for this to come in and sit alongside it as a solid #2 contender for best survival horror of 2026 is no small feat. When you consider this is a game built on a much tighter budget - complete with crowdfunding support - and the pressures of working in a country at war, it highlights how human creativity can endure as means to drive a sense of normalcy in our lives. Go check it out.

Wrapping Up

Okay that’s time for this week. I am currently uncertain as to how and what we will cover next week. As mentioned at top I am stretched rather thin right now, and at the time of publication next week I’ll be overseas. But I should still have something over in your inbox!

In fact, maybe send me some questions! We can try and do a QnA in the newsletter about a bunch of topics from the past few months. Drop me a message below or in the comments if you have them! Okay, back to work, see you soon!