Interview
October 21, 2025
Unreal Engine 5 helps Frogwares deliver a different sort of horror in The Sinking City 2
Created in the year 2000, Frogwares is an independent game development studio based in Ukraine and Ireland. They are behind the Sherlock Holmes series and the Lovecraftian detective-horror game, The Sinking City. Thanks to the work of their talented team of artists and programmers, their games are available for all major platforms, including PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
When The Sinking City 2 is released in 2026, fans of the original action-adventure game are going to discover that a different sort of horror has seeped into Frogwares’ latest creation.
While both games take place in the same universe and 1920s time period, the sequel takes players to an all-new location to tell an original story in an entirely different way.
This time around, players will be faced with otherworldly horrors creeping through a much more combat-oriented game. This next step in the franchise is inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft lexicon of tales like The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Call of Cthulhu, but also classic games like Resident Evil, Alan Wake, and The Last of Us, and movies as far reaching as Forgotten, Shutter Island, and Get Out.
It is, in a few words, an altogether different sort of dread that infuses The Sinking City 2. We spoke with the team at Frogwares about why they decided to take a horror-first approach, and how some of Unreal Engine 5’s most powerful tools helped them to breathe new life into their latest creation.
While both games take place in the same universe and 1920s time period, the sequel takes players to an all-new location to tell an original story in an entirely different way.
This time around, players will be faced with otherworldly horrors creeping through a much more combat-oriented game. This next step in the franchise is inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft lexicon of tales like The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Call of Cthulhu, but also classic games like Resident Evil, Alan Wake, and The Last of Us, and movies as far reaching as Forgotten, Shutter Island, and Get Out.
It is, in a few words, an altogether different sort of dread that infuses The Sinking City 2. We spoke with the team at Frogwares about why they decided to take a horror-first approach, and how some of Unreal Engine 5’s most powerful tools helped them to breathe new life into their latest creation.
Image courtesy of Frogwares. Captured from an alpha build. Visuals and content are not final.
Thanks for joining us! What narrative, setting, or characters does The Sinking City 2 share with its predecessor? Do the two games take place in the same universe?
Sergiy Oganesyan, Head of Publishing: The two games are set in the same universe and time frame—1920s United States, drenched in a gloomy, Lovecraftian horror vibe. And just like before, a supernatural flood has taken hold of a city and is changing it in unfathomable ways. But that’s mainly where the similarities end. The Sinking City 2 features a new, stand-alone story entirely separate from the one told in the original game. So we’re not going back to play as Charles Reed, nor are we going back to the city of Oakmont. We’re now going to be in the city of Arkham—a name that any Lovecraft fan should recognize straight away.
And we made all these narrative choices for a reason. We wanted to create a story and setting that wasn’t burdened by what we created in the original game, especially since players have various endings they favor or consider to be the “true ending” to that story.
This way, we can let existing fans come back into this familiar world fresh, while anyone who never played the original can also step in without feeling like they are missing a big chunk of the story. Besides, poor Charles went through enough mind-shattering trauma in the first game. It feels borderline abusive to bring him back and put him through the wringer all over again!
While this game is much more combat-oriented, can we still expect some puzzle-solving?
Alexander Gresko, Lead Game Designer: Yes, there will still be detective work and puzzle-solving, but we’re designing it in such a way that it will all be optional. We’re known for making detective games and while we are now evolving, we also feel we found a great way of combining survival horror gameplay with optional investigation mechanics—something we want to do, especially for our diehard fans who particularly love this about our games.
So in The Sinking City 2, players can choose to investigate whatever clues they want, knowing in return they will be rewarded with more lore, supplies, alternate routes, hidden secrets, and such. There’s a huge chunk of content that will pay off both gameplay-wise and emotionally, if you decide to invest into investigating it. You could, of course, progress without this knowledge, but it will be potentially easier or more engrossing to do so based on the info you’ve deduced yourself.
Image courtesy of Frogwares. Captured from an alpha build. Visuals and content are not final.
The Sinking City was much more of a detective adventure game when it hit in 2019. You’ve since said you hope to use The Sinking City 2 to reinvent the studio with a horror-first focus. What drove that decision?
Oganesyan: We’re an independent studio that, for the past 25 years, has become synonymous with making detective games, which is great, but it also pigeonholes us. The industry is changing around us, as are player tastes, and they will continue to do so for as long as people are playing. So we want to broaden our abilities and our audience now to better secure the studio’s future. We want to be able to keep doing this for 20-plus more years to come, and in order to do that, we need to start taking bolder steps.
What specifically would you say is the distinction between “horror-first” and what you created with the original Sinking City?
Gresko: It’s mainly a matter of the core gameplay we focus on, since the setting is constant across the two. For The Sinking City, we were primarily an adventure detective game. The core focus was solving mysteries, exploring a populated city, talking to NPCs, gathering clues, and such. There were some smaller elements of combat, but much of the “horror” was implied, hidden in the shadows.
For a “horror-first” approach, we wanted a stronger sense of action and isolation. So combat and fighting are front and center. You now need to battle through grotesque abominations. You need to scavenge for supplies to survive. The world is now a threat and not just something that is there to creep you out. The “horrors” we create are not only in the shadows or implied but also in your face.
Arkham is also mostly a consumed and abandoned place, which creates a much stronger feeling of horror and desolation. In Oakmont, you saw people going about their lives in a city and still trying to function. Arkham is beyond that point, so the few who still remain there are in a much more disturbed state and nature.
Image courtesy of Frogwares. Captured from an alpha build. Visuals and content are not final.
The Sinking City 2 is meant to be a survival horror game that plumbs the depths of Cythulian horror. Are there any particular survival horror games, books, or movies that inspired you in this new journey?
Aurelie Ludot, Game Producer: Oh gosh, where to even begin? For books, it’s, of course, the entire collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories, from the most well-known ones like The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Call of Cthulhu to the lesser popularized stories like The Temple, The Whisperer in Darkness, or The Nameless City. These stories are all very familiar to many of us, but by rereading them, we end up zeroing in on different details. For example, we paid particular attention to stories that mention the city of Arkham. Often, it's just a paragraph or two, but those details are invaluable when trying to fill our own world with references. Collecting and pooling these details helped us build a clearer picture of what Arkham could look like.In terms of games, we closely examined the Resident Evil series, particularly RE2—essentially trying to learn from the best and see how we can build upon that. This naturally led us to The Evil Within series, given that Shinji Mikami, who created Resident Evil, also developed it and managed to create something unique within the genre. Likewise, titles like Alone in The Dark, Alan Wake, and even The Last of Us all helped in some way to shape and inspire our own ideas.
For films, we drew a lot of inspiration from movies that center on isolation and the psychological burden placed on the main character for unknown reasons. Films like Shutter Island, Get Out, and the South Korean film Forgotten were particularly influential. We also binge-watched films set in the 1920s USA to better capture the time setting. Movies like Babylon, The Aviator, and Changeling were instrumental in reigniting our imaginations for this setting.
In reinventing yourselves as a new sort of studio, you also decided to change over to Unreal Engine 5. Why was this a good time to do so?
Viacheslav Kobylinskyi, Technical Director: Frogwares has been working exclusively with Unreal since UE3, so we’ve always been eager to move to the latest technology, it was just a matter of when. And since with The Sinking City 2 we are rethinking and approaching many things differently from game design and our production processes, switching over to UE5 made the most sense.A clean slate in design and production meant an engine change would allow us to build everything around UE5 from the start. While that sounds daunting, speak to any team who switched engines mid-project, and they will all tell you to make the change at the start if you can. It will save you so much time and effort in the long run. And that makes a lot of sense, even on a psychological level. We’ve all seen how resistant human brains are to change, so if you go in with the mindset we’re starting something from scratch, the thinking shifts dramatically.
How smoothly was your team able to transition to Unreal Engine 5?
Kobylinskyi: The transition was quite smooth. We finished our last game on UE4 and started pre-production for the new project from scratch. All our internal tools were developed as separate plugins, so although the migration took some time, it was fairly straightforward. This also provided a great opportunity to get rid of a bunch of legacy code and finally perform a long-overdue refactor. We went into the transition well-prepared and made sure the team was adaptable, which proved to be the key to keeping this as smooth as possible.Image courtesy of Frogwares. Captured from an alpha build. Visuals and content are not final.
How effective were MetaHuman and MetaHuman Animator when it came to empowering the realistic look and facial animations of your characters, and how do you think they impacted the game’s look and feel?
Georgii Dominskyi, Animator & MoCap Producer: We were astonished at how fast, simple, and realistic the results were. After our initial tests, we reviewed our entire cutscene and dialogue creation process and reworked everything to better utilize these tools. I feel we’ve now integrated them without any sacrifices so now we’re just reaping the benefits from both systems. In terms of impact, I think the final verdict will come once the game is out. In the past, we often heard from fans and critics that facial animations were something we struggled with, which is a fair point. Having tools that are so effective might finally allow us to push past this hurdle and help make The Sinking City 2 one of our best titles yet.Nikita Bohdanov, Cinematic Artist: I feel the same. We find ourselves impressed with MetaHuman and MetaHuman Animator almost on a daily basis. Both tools have greatly streamlined our whole process of character creation and facial animation. Previously, we relied on a procedural facial animation system that was quite difficult to modify. Our characters also ended up with a more "gamey," stylized appearance. MetaHumans allowed us to achieve near-CG quality characters in real-time gameplay, which is amazing. And with MetaHuman Animator to complement them, we avoided falling into the uncanny valley. Now, we can capture very nuanced performances and fine-tune them in post-production using Control Rig. What’s more, its low technical entry threshold means many on the team can try to master it, promoting a lot more collaboration across departments.
Image courtesy of Frogwares. Captured from an alpha build. Visuals and content are not final.
You’re also making use of the Lumen dynamic global illumination and reflection system as well as ray tracing. What has it been like diving into this new system and how has it changed the look of The Sinking City 2?
Kobylinskyi: Adopting new technologies is always challenging, so there was a learning curve for sure, especially when we were using version 5.0, and we needed more information and guides. However, after several Unreal Fests and subsequent engine updates, things became much more clear to us. We now understand the tool better and have properly integrated it into our development process.And, of course, the effort was well worth it, given the results we’re seeing. Lumen has significantly improved our lighting and reflection systems, creating a more immersive and visually stunning environment. For us, especially where The Sinking City 2 has a lot of wet surfaces, Lumen allows us to achieve much more realistic and dynamic lighting effects that were previously really difficult to attain.
How did you make use of Nanite’s virtualized geometry to build out your semi-open world?
Kobylinskyi: Without a doubt, Nanite significantly changed our approach to asset creation, allowing us to use highly detailed models without compromising performance. This has been particularly beneficial for creating much more detailed environments which were required for this game. Since we are going for that feeling of isolation and a more contained play space, we need the environment itself to do a lot of the immersion heavy lifting. We’re placing a lot more reliance on the actual city itself as part of the story and feel of the game versus, say, interactions with NPCs, dialogues, etc.That said, while new technologies are fantastic and help solve old problems, they can also bring new challenges. For instance, with Nanite, managing the increased asset sizes and optimizing our workflows to accommodate them has required some adjustments from our team.
Image courtesy of Frogwares. Captured from an alpha build. Visuals and content are not final.
Were there any other Unreal Engine tools you leaned on while creating The Sinking City 2?
Kobylinskyi: If I had to pick my favorite, I would say Unreal Engine 5’s introduction of World Partition. The One File Per Actor system, enabling multiple team members to work on the same level simultaneously, greatly improved our development process. Also, World Partition’s built-in streaming system and the ability to distribute actors across different grids based on their size have been incredibly helpful in developing large levels and our semi-open-world environment. It even allowed us to retire our own internal solution from UE4, which had similar functionality but, of course, was a lot more DIY and restricted.Overall, our project utilizes almost all the new developments of Unreal Engine 5, including Virtual Shadow Maps, MetaSounds, State Trees for enemies, and PCG for levels. These tools have collectively enhanced our development process, allowing us to create a more dynamic and immersive game world.
Kostiantyn Iakushenko, CTO: When UE5.4 launched, we decided to move to Motion Matching instead of our old main character controller. Epic’s sample project gave us a starting point, but adapting it for The Sinking City 2 was still a challenge, mainly because recording and integrating mocap data specifically for Motion Matching required a complete pivot from our previous pipeline.
Another hurdle was lack of references - our game requires a much slower, more horror-oriented controller than your average action adventure. At that time, and even now, there are no good examples for this style implemented fully in Motion Matching.
It took about a year to fully implement the running cycle, while walking stays on the old system for now. Along the way, we learned a lot about animation pipelines and worked closely with Epic to refine our approach.
Now, we have a clear plan and a strong foundation. Motion Matching greatly simplifies the development of transitions inside the Main Character controller, making the overall system design much easier to maintain. For our next project, we’ll integrate Motion Matching from day one to streamline development and reach our full vision faster.
With all of these tools at your disposal, we’re curious how you used them to breathe life into your game’s iconic Lovecraftian horrors like the Deep Ones, Mi-gos, and occult zealots.
George Boitsov, Lead 3D Animator: Without a doubt, the biggest leap we had was using MetaHuman Creator for our characters as well as MetaHuman Animator for facial capture. And that has helped shape our enemy creations, too. Once we were able to easily capture and create life-like human facial reactions, we could then transfer those over to our creature designs to be amplified or exaggerated.Since so much of The Sinking City 2 will be focused on combat and survival, we need our enemies to really come to life and so far we’re seeing results we would have never dreamed of using our old tools and methods.
Image courtesy of Frogwares. Captured from an alpha build. Visuals and content are not final.
How did you go about designing unique creatures for your world that would still fit into the Lovecraftian mythos? Can you give us any examples?
Vladislav Chenchik, Lead Concept Artist: This may sound a bit obvious but one of the most important steps in creating our monsters is to thoroughly collect and then try to follow the canonical descriptions Lovecraft made. Our team needs to understand key elements that the writer came up with so there is a clear feeling our creatures genuinely belong in our Lovercraft-inspired world and not some other horror setting.However, that is not always an option, as sometimes a creature isn’t overly described by Lovecraft. We only have small hints or a few sentences at best. In cases like these, the concept artists will look at the creature designs we already have and then use those as a base to start evolving the next design. We try to answer the question of where this new creature can fit into a Lovecraft “monster hierarchy” and also what its role is in the game. Having found those answers, the concept artists then develop several basic forms that take into account the general setting of the game, atmosphere, lighting, and such. We then bring these basic options to the narrative and design team for discussion. After feedback, the artists then finalize one of the selected creature designs.
Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Where can our community find out more about The Sinking City 2 and Frogwares?
Oganesyan: Thank you for reaching out to us; it means a lot to the whole team! For anyone wanting to keep up with us, the best place to talk to us is on our public Discord. We share a lot of exclusive stuff with our fans there.We post most of our news and updates on our studio and game Twitter/X account, but if you despise social media, then just visit our website or sign up for our newsletter.