"Did I forget to mention there's a DLC campaign? Because [Little Nightmares] did well enough for Tarsier Studios to make a DLC campaign titled Little Nightmares: Secrets of the Maw. I'll review that eventually." - Spencer, 2017.
Yep. Two years in the making, I'm finally ready to review DLC stuff! Now I reviewed Little Nightmares during the Christmas craze of 2017, where not only did I give the game a 10/10, I made the argument that it would be my personal Game of the Year. That was the only time I made a Game of the Year "nomination" as it were, because if anyone knows me it's that I have a really hard time keeping to a schedule! So by the time I make a Game of the Year nomination (and explaining why) the year has long since past and it's no longer relevant. Anyway, for context, Little Nightmares is a stealth-based puzzle platformer (with horror elements) designed with a Tim Burton-style aesthetic. Featuring an atmospheric soundtrack, and a thought-provoking (albeit wordless) story, and a very unconventional style when it comes to horror games.
The DLC campaign, titled Secrets of the Maw, stars The Runaway Kid, or Seven, or The Prisoner. Look, he doesn't have a canon name, and those are just some of the names the fandom commonly associated with this character. As much as I would love to call him "Joey Joeington" for the remainder of this post, I'll keep things simple and refer to him as Seven (because the previous protagonist is canonically named Six, and because typing "The Runaway Kid" five million times is gonna get old real fast). Anyway, Seven is trapped aboard the titular Maw. In case you never played the original game or read my review, the Maw is a kind of hotel/submarine hybrid that is filled with abnormally humongous furniture and home to a plethora of grotesque giants. The Maw is normally underwater but once a year it surfaces in random spot on the globe, where morbidly obese pig-like creatures known as the Guests come aboard and devour a mighty feast. Now this wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the meat in the food is strongly implied to come from human children. You can see why Seven wants to leave.
The first chapter, The Depths, has Seven follow almost the exact reverse route Six (the main protagonist of the original game) took during her first chapter. During this he follows a nameless girl armed with a flashlight who's been planning to escape for a while. Considering she disappears and all that remains of her is the flashlight (which Seven takes and uses himself) relatively early on in the adventure, it's safe to say the girl doesn't make it very far before... Something caught her.
After falling down a hole, Seven finds himself in the flooded basement of the Maw, where the Granny lurks just below the murky water. I hope you aren't afraid of water (or things hiding in the water), because the Granny's main form of attack is to attempt to drown Seven with her long spindly limbs. The atmosphere of this chapter is dreadful in the best possible way, and whenever you set foot in the water here your heart just starts racing. There aren't too many puzzles in this chapter, since it consists mostly of platforming across the floating furniture and trying to stay out of the water as long as possible. Also, fun fact! The Granny is the only monster that dies onscreen during the DLC.
The next chapter, The Hideaway, picks up right the cliffhanger ending of The Depths (spoilers, Seven gets caught by the Janitor and stuffed into a meatbag heading for the Maw's kitchen). Seven manages to escape from the meatbag, but falls all the way down to the Maw's engine room. Now I know this is going to sound petty and nitpicky, but this whole review is biased, there is no way a human could survive a fall such as the one Seven had without at least some broken bones, but the fact he survives with only a minor bruise is a bit taxing on my suspension of disbelief. Yes, I can believe in a macabre hotel-submarine that feeds fat greasy swine-people food made of human flesh, and I can believe that the whole thing is being run by a narcissistic Geisha who may or may not have left her own daughter to die, AND the main protagonist of the original game being revealed to be some kind of cannibalistic vampire-esque monster, but Seven falling a great distance and getting back up without a single scratch is what breaks the immersion.
The Hideaway is by far the least scary of the DLC chapters, but that doesn't mean it's the worst. Unless we're measuring a horror game's quality on scare factor alone (for example, Five Nights at Freddy's 3 is considered to be the weakest game in that franchise precisely because it's the least scary of the FN@F games, even though it did have some really cool gameplay mechanics), in that case, yeah, it would be the worst. But I'm not measuring it on just scare factor, because this chapter has some of my favorite puzzles in it. Namely, working together with small white conical creatures known as the Nomes (pronounced like "Gnome") to move from room to room, eventually warming up the engine enough to reveal a secret passage that leads to a (potential) exit. I really like The Hideaway despite it's lack of horror, but one knock against it is the fact that there are no new threats in this chapter, the only monster here is the Janitor (who was the very first monster you encountered in the original game), and it isn't even actively searching for you (instead just grabbing you if you happen to get in it's way). To be fair, the story reason for this is because the Janitor is preoccupied with both it's duties to maintaining the Maw and is also looking around for Six, so it's attention and priorities aren't focused on Seven.
The final DLC Chapter, The Residence, is definitely my favorite out of the three. In it, Seven must explore the Geisha's private suite at the very top of the Maw. Now, if you played the original game you know the Geisha is bad news, since she was the final boss as well as the primary antagonist. However, you don't get to see much of the Geisha at all here, at least until the final couple of rooms. Instead, the primary threat are these masked shadowy figures similar in appearance to Seven.
These shadows are, in my opinion, the scariest thing in this game. They can only be defeated by the shining the flashlight directly on them (paralleling the Geisha's weakness to reflections), but that is only a temporary solution, as the shadows can just respawn over and over. Additionally, they are much faster and more aggressive than every other monster in the Maw combined, gunning for you the moment you step into their territory. The other monsters at least of the courtesy of let out a squeal or gasp when they see you, giving you a brief headstart. The shadows offer no such warning at all. They only appear in dark or poorly lit rooms, but that becomes even more terrifying because part-way through the chapter, the lights in every room are switched off, with the only source of light being Seven's flashlight.
The Residence also sports what I feel to be the best level design of the DLC chapters. While The Depths focused a bit too much on horror and platforming, and Hideaway focused a bit too much on puzzle solving, Residence has the perfect amount of both. Featuring some really clever puzzles (one of which felt like it was pulled straight from Indiana Jones) and some genuinely yelp-worthy spooks. It also continued the dollhouse/hotel/prison aesthetic of the original game, but with a more lavish flair. After all, why would the owner of such an eldritch establishment reside in a place just as dirty and unkempt as say, the kitchen, or the basement. Also, the ending of The Residence is somehow just as chilling and horrific as the ending of the original game. It also makes what was already one of the most nightmarish scenes in Little Nightmares even more disturbing in retrospect, and to spoil what I'm talking about would be a crime against the game.
Overall, all the DLC chapters were good. It's somewhat of a bummer that we only got two brand-new monsters (the Granny and the Shadows) out of this, and I do feel like The Hideaway could use more action and/or scare factor moments, but overall, this was a job well done from Tarsier Studios. Now we just gotta wait for the prequel that was announced fairly recently. But anyway, I give Little Nightmares: Secrets of the Maw 9 hungry kids out of 10.
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