The Sinking City hands-on preview: Like Sherlock Holmes, but weird

Oakmont, Massachusetts, is drowning. Fully half the city has been abandoned to the sea, bustling city streets now replaced by rivers, winding between the sagging wooden edifices of lost storefronts. Problem is, I need to get into one of those shops. A diving crew’s gone missing, the only known survivor’s gone mad, and I’ve been charged with finding out whether the rest are alive or not—and the workshop that made diving suits is on this block somewhere.

Sighing, I clamber into a nearby rowboat and hope that the top levels have survived relatively unscathed. I’ll tell you what, Sherlock Holmes never had it this rough.

STARING INTO THE ABYSS

 is more ambitious than I imagined. When game—I expected developer Frogwares to turn out one of its games with a cosmic horror bent. And that would’ve been fine! The games all follow the same basic case-by-case structure, but they’re (with the exception of 2016’s ) also fairly enjoyable detective games. .