Secrets of the Maw is the expansion levels for Little Nightmares (#9 on my list this year! And beaten just the day before lol) that combines 3 levels telling the story of another denizen of The Maw and his journey. The levels are more or less retreads of previous areas remixed in new ways, with more or less recycled monsters as well, with one significant and fairly cool exception. That is one of the reasons why I was not really wild at all about this pass - a lot of what we'd seen before but again, and a new focus on puzzles that I found more tiresome than enjoyable. In fact, I'd say I actively disliked much of the pass outside of the first level that has one pretty good gimmick that unfortuantely falls into a poor trap for a horror game - repeating a section several times to get it right basically destroys all of the tension and thrill. And damn does this game like to fuck things up for you so you have to repeat them 10 times!
Our new hero is a bit more lanky but unfortunately controls pretty identical to our Raincoated heroine from the main game. I thought it would have been neat to have the character control a bit different but that might be a bit too ambitious for a DLC. There is a new ability though that is used mainly in Episode 2 that lets you cuddle with the gnomes for a moment to 'mind control' them into being your buddy to help solve puzzles which is kinda neat but then they just had to make it annoying and turn a whole section into 'find the 10 buddies to help you', however they never actually EXPLAIN what the fuck they want you to do so you only realize that was your goal near the end... kind of a pain in the ass. The story has some creepy moments and ends on a dour but honestly pretty expected note (you just happen to be the gnome Six eats near the end of the main game, SHOCKING TWIST), but I do believe the highlight is in Episode 1 with the Underwater monster who is essentially just a retread of the Shoe monster in the main game and which is just a ripoff of the Water monster in Amnesia The Dark Descent. And it is then kinda ruined in its final encounter where I spent about 10~ tries going through the motions of figuring out how exactly the designers wanted me to solve the puzzle of killing this thing off before finally figuring it out, but since they were going for ACTION it instead forced me to try and figure things out on the fly which went poorly (10 times) which meant that it was just frustrating and annoying rather than exhilarating.
While I enjoy the beat-by-beat of the Little Nightmare game of going into creepy new areas and solving straightforward puzzles while occassionally dodging monsters - the Secrets of the Maw expansion focused WAY too sharply on new puzzles rather than new monsters and got to the point of sheer tedium many, many times. Even finishing the game was a complete drag and the kinda obvious ending didn't help any. If I hadn't already pre-ordered and paid for Little Nightmares 2 this genuinely may have gotten me to reconsider my purchase... When I replay the main game in 5+ years I will 100% be skipping this crap.
Our new hero is a bit more lanky but unfortunately controls pretty identical to our Raincoated heroine from the main game. I thought it would have been neat to have the character control a bit different but that might be a bit too ambitious for a DLC. There is a new ability though that is used mainly in Episode 2 that lets you cuddle with the gnomes for a moment to 'mind control' them into being your buddy to help solve puzzles which is kinda neat but then they just had to make it annoying and turn a whole section into 'find the 10 buddies to help you', however they never actually EXPLAIN what the fuck they want you to do so you only realize that was your goal near the end... kind of a pain in the ass. The story has some creepy moments and ends on a dour but honestly pretty expected note (you just happen to be the gnome Six eats near the end of the main game, SHOCKING TWIST), but I do believe the highlight is in Episode 1 with the Underwater monster who is essentially just a retread of the Shoe monster in the main game and which is just a ripoff of the Water monster in Amnesia The Dark Descent. And it is then kinda ruined in its final encounter where I spent about 10~ tries going through the motions of figuring out how exactly the designers wanted me to solve the puzzle of killing this thing off before finally figuring it out, but since they were going for ACTION it instead forced me to try and figure things out on the fly which went poorly (10 times) which meant that it was just frustrating and annoying rather than exhilarating.
While I enjoy the beat-by-beat of the Little Nightmare game of going into creepy new areas and solving straightforward puzzles while occassionally dodging monsters - the Secrets of the Maw expansion focused WAY too sharply on new puzzles rather than new monsters and got to the point of sheer tedium many, many times. Even finishing the game was a complete drag and the kinda obvious ending didn't help any. If I hadn't already pre-ordered and paid for Little Nightmares 2 this genuinely may have gotten me to reconsider my purchase... When I replay the main game in 5+ years I will 100% be skipping this crap.