The Sinking City with Frogwares’ Sergey Oganesyan
[b]Ingmar[/b]: Would you say the game involves any actual puzzle-solving, or is the mystery itself the one big meta-puzzle to solve?
[b]Sergey[/b]: Well, it’s a mix of both, but in a different way. We don’t have traditional puzzles in the game, like aligning elements to form a photo or something like that. Each side quest is a riddle for you to crack, but the main quest is just one big mystery.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: If I’ve understood this correctly, there are going to be several ways of accomplishing particular goals, right?
[b]Sergey[/b]: Well, how you get to the end depends on your actions and your intuition. As I said, finding the right clue at a seemingly optional location might completely change the course of the quest. Let me give you an example. In the demo of our game, shown at GDC and EGX Rezzed, the outcome of the side quest depends on whether or not you find the right clues. Once you know where to go, you can go there straight away, or pay a visit to someone else and talk to them first. Based on that, you will have two opposing endings, and let me tell you, people who actually found that optional location felt very smart and well rewarded.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: How important are the action mechanics, and what kind can be found in The Sinking City?
[b]Sergey[/b]: Very important. There’s a full-scale combat system in the game, meaning that you will have weapons like Colts, rifles, etc. So you can use that to shoot the monsters I mentioned earlier, as well as people, if you want to. But usually we want to give players the option of choosing their own approach. Ammunition is scarce in our game, and you really need to pay attention to how many bullets you have. Based on your resources and the strength of your enemies, the player might want to reconsider their tactics. Maybe instead of going in guns blazing, it’ll be smarter to set a beartrap and sneak past them? Or simply run away? The choice is yours, but so are the consequences.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: Does the game contain some kind of skill system?
[b]Sergey[/b]: Yeah, we are aiming to add certain skills for players to unlock. We will talk about that down the road, though.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: Is it possible to get lost in the city?
[b]Sergey[/b]: The player will have access to the city map, although we do want to make it so they can find their way without it. As I said, our streets have names so they can use it to find their way. Also, we have landmarks – unique buildings and locations that we hope will help them navigate in the city. ‘Hey, I remember that place I need to go to. It was by that gigantic weird-looking monolith thing. I can see the monolith from here, so there’s no need to open up the map’. Should work the way it does in real life.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: I understand there are different factions in the city. Please give us an idea of those and what purpose the different factions have in the game.
[b]Sergey[/b]: When you say factions, remember that our game is not an RPG. You will not be able to join them as you want, there’s no guilds to work for. But yeah, people you will encounter on the streets of Oakmont will sometimes belong to different groups and societies.
We have several powerful families that control certain parts of the city. Under the extreme conditions – meaning the flood – they are desperately trying to preserve their influence, or maybe even expand it. It’s politics, but they use various methods to achieve their goals, violence being the most obvious of them. So when one of them approaches you, maybe be careful and don’t blindly accept every quest the game has to offer. Some of them might have you do something you will regret later.
Don’t forget that it’s the Roaring Twenties mixed with Lovecraft, so gangsters and racial tensions are just the tip of the iceberg. People in Oakmont are a very conservative society, and they like to do things a certain way. They have strange and perhaps appalling customs and traditions.
In the demo, the player could meet a certain character whose mouth was sewn shut as a punishment for talking too much. And she continues to live a ‘normal’ life, has a job and whatnot. Just another example.
[b]Sergey[/b]: As a detective, your job is really to conduct investigations. But what makes these investigations different is not only gameplay, but also stories. I like one side quest in particular. A guy is asking you to find his sister, who was admitted to a mental institution. She had been there until one day he came to visit and the doctors told him they had never known a patient with that name. That whole side quest and its ending is pure shock value, I’m not going to lie, but by untangling the mystery you will understand why everything happened the way it did.
The stories you can experience should and will surprise, amuse and shock you.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: Side missions aside, what kind of other optional content does the game have?
[b]Sergey[/b]: Collectibles, for example. We will have letters, written by people who were about to die. You know, their last wishes, regrets, messages to their loved ones. Finding collectibles like this is a cool and subtle way to learn more about the city and its story. We believe we have very detailed lore in our game and we want players to learn the story of the city bit by bit. What’s cool about these letters is that they were written by our communities. That’s one of the ways people influenced our game.
Regarding other optional content and encounters, we will reveal that when the time comes.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: Fear of the unknown is an important element of Lovecraft. How do you try to capture this aspect in the game, and do you consider this a conflict with actually showing the monsters?
.png "Screenshot for The Sinking City with Frogwares’ Sergey Oganesyan")
[b]Sergey[/b]: I mentioned the flood as one of the ways to convey the fear of the unknown. And I don’t think there’s a conflict. Monsters are there to put pressure on the player, add some raw thrill to the game. But it’s not what the game is about; it’s not a horror game, and it’s not about fighting monsters.
But when it comes to more powerful beings (wink-wink), that’s as spoilery as it gets, sorry.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: What games do you consider influential for The Sinking City?
.png "Screenshot for The Sinking City with Frogwares’ Sergey Oganesyan")
[b]Sergey[/b]: We looked at many different games, but I’d avoid drawing parallels, to be honest.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: There isn’t a more precise release date right now than 2018, right?
[b]Sergey[/b]: Aiming for late 2018. We are still in production, adding new quests, more content. There’s a lot of things to do.
.png "Screenshot for The Sinking City with Frogwares’ Sergey Oganesyan")
[b]Ingmar[/b]: Is it likely that Frogwares is going to return to the Sherlock Holmes series in the future?
[b]Sergey[/b]: We never said goodbye to Sherlock, and we aren’t going to. But as of now, we are all about The Sinking City.
[b]Ingmar[/b]: Thanks very much for your time, Sergey! We look forward to seeing and hearing more about The Sinking City in the coming months.
.png "Screenshot for The Sinking City with Frogwares’ Sergey Oganesyan")
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