The Sinking City is mostly successful in adapting Cthulhu Mythos to a video game, creating scenarios that convincingly craft a world from the sum total of Lovecraft's paranoia and dread. Oakmont is inspired by fictional Lovecraft towns like Innsmouth. As I looked, a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim repulsion and oddly enough, I found this overtone more disturbing than the primary impression." And far out at sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long, black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of odd latent malignancy. There were some large square Georgian houses, too, with hipped roofs, cupolas, and railed 'widow's walks.' These were mostly well back from the water, and one or two seemed to be in moderately sound condition … Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end in indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most decayed. The vast huddle of sagging gambrel roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I could see that many roofs had wholly caved in.
The narrator's first impression of Innsmouth describes The Sinking City's invented town of Oakmont just as well:
In it, a young antiquarian visits the "rumour-shadowed" town of Innsmouth, which is populated by Dagon-worshipping fish-people. The biggest influence looks to be "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," the only Lovecraft novella published as a book during his life (most were serialized in magazines like Astounding Stories). Reed's bad dreams point to the author's Dream Cycle, which includes Great Ones and Outer Gods like Nyarlathotep, but it's unclear how much later mysteries in The Sinking City will also fold in plot points from more unconnected stories like "The Colour Out of Space," "The Rats in the Walls" or "The Outsider" (basis for Castle Freak). Lovecraft readers will recognize pieces of "Dagon," "The Temple," "The Horror at Red Hook" and "The Call of Cthulhu" in early missions, but it will be interesting to see just how deep The Sinking City plumbs Lovecraft's oeuvre. Tracking down a diving suit of your own is an early objective in "The Sinking City." Frogwares In a gameplay demo covering the first two mysteries in The Sinking City, we questioned suspects, put together clues, recreated crime scenes, conducted archival research, lied to protect a killer driven by supernatural compulsions, motorboated around the flooded back alleys of Oakmont, crafted new ammo to shoot at spindly creatures and donned a deep sea diving suit to visit an underwater shrine to a tentacle-bearded Great Old One (you know who). Soon after disembarking, you'll solve a murder that not only implicates two formidable local families-the ape-faced Throgmortons and fish-faced Innsmouthers-but might also be the harbinger for an even darker fate facing the town. You've arrived at Oakmont, an isolated Massachusetts town inundated with monstrosities after a supernatural event locals call the Flood. Private eye Charles Reed awakens aboard the steamship Charon from terrible dreams of falling into a tentacled maw. We recently sat down to play the first two missions. The Sinking City is an ambitious new adventure game from developer Frogwares, inspired by the stories of H.P.