You find yourself in the rainy, New England city of Oakmont. You’re a private eye who’s been tasked with finding a missing son with nothing but a map and a compass to guide you. Your intuition tells you that you might be able to find more information on the disappearance at one of the local speakeasies, though that could easily lead to a dead end.
Above you are desolate, apocalyptic skies awash with oppressive hues of grey and blue. The buildings around you sport a fading, waterlogged opulence, and the neon signs attached to them flicker as though nearly dead. Many of the streets are completely flooded, forcing you to travel the city by motorboat.
And yet, you must forge ahead in search of the missing fisherman. You accepted the job at the request of his father, a man named Robert. Whether or not Robert’s cause is a lost one is up to you to find out.
This is a scene from Frogwares’ The Sinking City, an upcoming open-world action game that’s heavily influenced by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a pioneer of surrealist horror. 1920s Oakmont, a fictional city in Massachusetts, is its primary setting. The player assumes the role of private investigator Charles W. Reed as he accepts work from the many troubled denizens of Oakmont.
Oakmont is stunningly wretched. It’s a city in which the decadence of America’s Roaring 1920s has come to a crashing halt, devastated by massive Lovecraftian destruction. It’s a peculiar setting with a lot of character and is central to the bizarre and disturbing atmosphere of the game.
Just as the game’s title implies, the player enters the game after Oakmont has been ravaged by floods. “In order to make Oakmont a depressing place...we flooded the city to disrupt its functionality and create a dire situation where people would feel helpless and powerless,” Frogwares’ Lead Environment Designer Alexey Yurkin said. “The flood itself symbolizes one of the most iconic Lovecraftian underlying themes — the feeling of insignificance.”
Yurkin explained that “loneliness, decay, [and] desolation” were other themes that Frogwares identified as evident in both Lovecraft’s work and the cultural history of 1920s America. To reflect this, all of Oakmont’s buildings are all dilapidated, and its citizens give the player the impression that they’ve seen better days.
Frogwares also looked to the cities featured in Lovecraft’s work for inspiration, like Arkham or Innsmouth. For example, Frogwares knew their own Lovecraftian city needed to contain a number of dark alleys to house the denizens of its sinister underbelly. “All these cults need a place to operate, don’t they?”, Yurkin said.
In spite of its Lovecraftian surreality, the other remarkable thing about Oakmont is how realistic it feels as a city. Frogwares spent a lot of time studying up on urban design to get the feel of the city right, researching the topology and urban ecosystems of other seaside cities to use as references for Oakmont. “Creating a believable feeling — that you are in a real city — was a priority for us”, Yurkin said.
Furthermore, Frogwares chose to defy typical video game convention and do away with quest markers for objectives. Instead, the player must rely on NPC instruction, their own sense of direction, and things like street signs or landmarks to navigate Oakmont. “We wanted to push the detective experience a bit further, create the feeling of a real investigation in all its components”, Yurkin said. “We also felt markers and waypoints are generally a bit too arcade-y and too distracting.”
We’re excited to lose ourselves in Oakmont’s many dark and furtive passages. Yurkin also explained that many of the atmospheric details have lore behind them, including the ads for perfume and alcohol that adorn Oakmont’s walls, so we doubt we’ll ever grow bored.
You can join us when The Sinking City is released for PC on March 21, 2019.