Jump scare! The Sinking City Remastered has surprise launched on Steam, and it's free to anyone who owns the original game

You know a game is serious about its horror when even its release is a jump scare. So it is for The Sinking City Remastered, which (following its announcement back in March) has surprise launched today.

The remaster is primarily a visual and technical sprucing up, though it does include tweaks to gameplay and accessibility as well as the addition of a photo mode. I haven't had the chance yet to jump into it myself yet, but it seems like a pretty robust new release—and, best of all, it's completely free for anyone who already owns the original The Sinking City on Steam (and currently 50% off for those who don't).

Not many Lovecraftian stories get a happy ending, and for a long while The Sinking City seemed like it would never escape legal limbo. Caught in a dispute between developer Frogwares and original publisher Nacon, there was a period where the Steam version was rolled back to an earlier build and denied the various post-release patches that ironed out many of its launch issues. Not to mention that Frogwares itself received no income from any sales.

Now, the property is entirely back in the studio's hands, and this definitive new version of the game is a heartening conclusion to the whole saga—and it's even more impressive when you consider that the Ukrainian developer is still weathering the effects of the Russian invasion.

Of course, it's also a clever way of getting people caught up on the first game ahead of the release of the sequel, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter earlier this year.

If you've never tried The Sinking City—or bounced off its buggy launch version—it's definitely worth taking this excuse to go back to it. Though its survival horror combat is definitely flawed, its detailed detective work across a surreal and unsettling flooded city is pretty fascinating, and no one does Lovecraftian atmosphere quite like Frogwares.