The Sinking City 2 Gets Delayed to 2026 Due to War and Gameplay Rehaul

Ukraine-based Frogwares has been working on the upcoming The Sinking City 2, an Unreal Engine 5 title that has players surviving through the flooded city of Arkham, fighting off the eldritch monsters within. Though the team was hoping to release the Lovecraftian 1920s-inspired title sometime soon, it'll need some more refining.

The Sinking City 2 had been teased to launch sometime in 2025, as Frogwares prepared for a surprise December or January launch, but that timeframe has become impossible following a few factors that have made development difficult. So, the title's official launch has been moved to sometime in 2026, though we don't currently have information regarding a specific launch date or release window.

One of the main reasons for the delay is the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war — as a Ukraine-based developer, Frogwares has continued supporting their work in developing upcoming titles through the hardships. Sergiy Oganesyan, the Head of Publishing at Frogwares, shared this comment about developing a title in the midst of an invasion:

Developing a game during a war isn’t something you can ever really prepare for, but something you need to keep adapting to. At one point, we were losing power for days as drones and missiles hit our power grid. When that tactic stopped working, it became mass drone swarms every other night, going from midnight until dawn. You work all day, then spend the sleepless night listening for explosions, and somehow still need to function the next morning… These things all slowed us down regularly to the point where it just doesn’t make sense to try to rush what we have left to meet a date that we no longer feel is worth chasing. How moscow’s tactics to terrorize civilians will change again as winter comes is anyone's guess, so we’d rather be ready to adapt again, knowing we’re able to take our time. 

The delay is also happening due to the massive genre deviation from the original title, as The Sinking City 2 pits players in a survival horror setting. As a bit of a change of pace from other titles that Frogwares has jumped into, the team is facing the challenge head-on, learning more about the horror elements and adapting accordingly.

Here's what Alexander Gresko, Lead Game Designer at Frogwares, had to say about the genre shift, and how the team is approaching this new genre.

Switching to survival horror for the first time has been a whole new kind of challenge for us in itself, too. We’ve been making investigation adventures for more than twenty years, but survival horror asks for a completely different kind of design thinking. Tension, pacing, combat, etc. We’ve always loved the genre as fans, but once you start building it yourself, you realize how much you still have to do. It’s exciting, but it definitely makes development slower.

While The Sinking City 2 has been delayed to sometime in the first half of 2026, this doesn't mean the pace is slowing down at Frogwares. 12 new screenshots have been shared from the game, and Senior Social Media Manager at Frogwares, Anna Bieniek, said that the team will be showing off more gameplay in the coming months.

The Sinking City 2 is set to launch in the first half of 2026 on Windows PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.