With their game back in their control, Sinking City devs aim to correct all the previous wrongs

Had things gone differently, Frogwares’ The Sinking City would’ve trucked neatly along as one of the many decent but imperfect gaming renditions of Lovecraft’s works. Though this wasn’t meant to be, the developer is now finally in control of the game, with good news for its immediate future.

Notably, the controversy over the rights to The Sinking City has only come to a close very recently, with Frogwares regaining full publishing rights to the game almost five years after it first came out. To celebrate the occasion, fans can expect an all-new version of the game that integrates all the existing DLC, patches out bugs, and smooths out its performance. The new version of The Sinking City will be free for all owners of the game, and those who aren’t keen on losing their saves will have the opportunity to keep playing the old version, should they choose to do so.

What’s next for The Sinking City? And how will saves transfer?

As per Frogwares’ latest announcement, the new build of The Sinking City includes “the bugfixes and optimizations previously released for the game on other platforms. Essentially, it’s a patch. The reason we are calling it a new version is to emphasize the fact that it will exist alongside the current version for some time.” The goal is to release the new version of The Sinking City around “mid-January,” and it’s going to be free for all owners of the game.

Though the old saves will not be compatible with the new build, Frogwares is going to prepare new save files so that players can continue playing roughly from where they last stopped, in the old build. “However, since these are our saves, we won’t be able to match your previous progress 100%, so please expect some of your previous choices, inventory items and skills to be different,” says Frogwares.

Curiously, Frogwars has also hinted at some possible visual and gameplay improvements coming down the line, though players shouldn’t expect any of those for the mid-January retrofit. Its main goal, instead, is to consolidate all Steam versions of The Sinking City under Frogwares’ own banner, to release the three pieces of DLC that are available on other platforms (Merciful Madness, Chicago Organ Grinder, and the XP Boost), and patch out issues. The DLC will be sold separately for owners of the base game, but the Necronomicon Edition owners will be getting them for free, though potentially at a slightly later date.

The newer DLCs, Worshippers of the Necronomicon and the Investigator Pack, will be compatible with Frogwares’ new version of The Sinking City once it comes out.

Finally, those who purchased the standalone Gamesplanet build of The Sinking City may end up getting Steam keys all of their own, though Frogwares isn’t yet 100% sure on this front: “We are looking into it,” says the blog post.