Perhaps that was not your initial intention, but with my setting today I´m getting very eerie vibe. Cant help myself, now when you mentioned Burton and Carnivale(haven´t seen this one tho), I see it as a distorted sandy wasteland based on 1920s cabaret aesthetics and freakshow combined with those weird scary glitches that are part of American Horror Story intros. But again my visualisation can be miles from yours ;D
And it also reminds me of a point-and-click adventure game called Shardlight.

Do you have more detail description of what this Old City and its dangers are? Or that´s suppose to be a point and reason of anxiety that nobody knows for sure?