When it launched in 2019, The Sinking City was an anomaly for Ukrainian developer Frogwares, known for their Sherlock Holmesaction-adventure games. Instead, The Sinking City still featured the studio's detective mechanics but swapped out the Victorian investigator for a Lovecraftian horror game. It was a surprisingly smooth transition, with the grisly murders of Holmes' London replaced by the grisly horror of 1920s America being gradually subsumed by an encroaching eldritch god.