Game EXP: Little Nightmares: The Complete Edition - DLC The Secrets of the Maw [The Kid's Story]

I recently finished The Secrets of the Maw, a three-chapter DLC expansion for Little Nightmares as played on the Nintendo Switch.  The DLC comes packaged with Little Nightmares: Complete Edition and when I first started the game, I was given the choice to play as either Six or the Kid (the Runaway Kid according to the trailer) and not knowing anything about the game or that the DLC was specifically just the Kid.  I covered this a bit already in my article focusing on Six's story a few weeks ago so I will again refrain from making all of the judgments regarding lack of information and/or narration regarding the setting and names of characters because the format from the main game, more or less, holds true for the Kid's story.

Similar to the start of Six's story, the Kid's story also starts out with a nightmare, but his dream is with him swimming, surrounded by darkness.  He is then pulled underwater by an unknown. . .thing, which then ends the dream and forces him awake.  And again like Six's story, with the Kid, you have the room you start out in, then you turn to the right and go that way.  Why?  Who really knows why the Kid (or Six, or any of the other children) is there in the Maw, presumably kidnapped from somewhere and brought out to the middle of the ocean where they are turned into sausages to be consumed by rotund, obese humanoid monstrosities all the while overseen by a geisha-esque figure who oversees her entire operation to some unknown end.  Sorry.  Anyway, the format seemed, more or less, the same, but it wasn't.

As previously mentioned, I first played Six's story, and not just from a storytelling standpoint but a game mechanics one, I am glad I did because there was zero information about what you can do and how to operate and manipulate various objects.  Early on in the first chapter for the Kid, you have to pick up and throw an object at a button that is placed higher up on the wall than you can jump.  I realize complaining about a lack of tutorial system in a DLC for a game that you presumably have already played and learned the controls is odd and possibly out of place, but this was what I was feeling early on in the game.  And even being well aware of the game's mechanics and how to progress between areas, there were a number of times that I read too much into environmental cues and became stuck in an area over the course of three separate nights playing all because I failed to notice that tucked away up on the wall just next to some crates was a duct leading into the next room.  I would say I felt like an idiot for not noticing, but by that point, I was pretty annoyed at my inability to see something that was difficult enough already with the brightness turned up, and at the QA team who apparently had no issues getting through this particular area, thereby leaving it in the game without any further tweaks.

The biggest issue I had with the Kid's DLC chapters really started with Chapter 2: The Hideaway which introduces the Janitor to the Kid.  Once again, the Janitor's long touchy-Tim arms were a nuisance, and a lot of the interactions with this character was spent trying to figure out what to do in order to avoid him resulting in being captured.  A lot.  And just like the main game, the DLC chapters would take upwards of 28-35 seconds for the game to load between captured and starting over again, but we have already covered that so moving on.  Chapter 2: The Hideaway introduced semi-non-linear levels, whereas, in the main game, you were often times stuck in a room until you solved the puzzle and moved into the next area.  Here, you could often travel from one room to another, taking an object from two rooms back to use it in the room to the right of your starting room.  This section of the game I ended up having to look up a walkthrough because I kept getting lost, retracing my steps, and wandering through areas that I had already been in before but could still access, constantly making me think that there was a reason I could go back to previously explored areas and ended up fruitlessly searching through everything on screen looking for some clue or hidden puzzle piece that was never there, to begin with.

I ran into a similar experience in the final chapter, where you need to collect three objects to unlock a door (we will call it that to be semi-spoiler-free).  The three "keys" are hidden in rooms off of a multi-tiered area with various rooms to explore and like me, over-analyze.  There were so many times I would be playing but have to stop because I could not figure out what to do next, either from what I felt was a lack of clarity in the environmental clues or because I just made a puzzle's solution a lot more complicated than it actually was.  For example, there is a room you pass through full of portraits, and on the screen on the Switch, it really felt that the scale of the room was important to get across to the player.  The next room was an art gallery of sorts with buttons to push that illuminated a light above the paintings.  Now, because of the camera angle only moving when the player moves, it was difficult to see perfectly what each picture was in the gallery and if anything else happened while pushing buttons; there was also a strange statue in the foreground of the room seemingly hinting that this statue could be used to help solve the lighting problem (the lights would turn off after pressing the fifth button in front of a painting if any of the other paintings selected were incorrect).

I think what a lot of it comes down to is that I was a little disappointed both in the Kid's DLC chapters as well as my inability to solve some of the more basic puzzles in the game, like being able to see an exit out of a room as opposed to solving a complex puzzle involving Nomes, a filled mine cart, and the direction of the Maw as it rocks back and forth.  While I enjoyed the time to explore additional areas of the Maw, like the main game, I still felt in the dark about what the Maw actually is, and really, where the Kid was as they wandered from room to room.  The first area in Chapter 1: The Depths was full of water areas which introduced a swimming mechanic and encounters Granny (another villainous character who is never named) and kills her.  Then in Chapter 2: The Hideaway runs through more of the living areas and backrooms often populated by the Janitor, escapes him, and then solves a number of puzzles in Chapter 3: The Residence while defeating Shadow Children (presumably killed by The Lady as they suffer damage against the Kid's flashlight (more on that below) before being captured by The Lady at the end.  I guess I was kind of hoping that some of the questions that the main game left me with would have been answered?  

The form of The Maw was though revealed through one of the hidden bottles in the Kids' areas, as to what these bottles/jugs are and why the Kid uncorks them is still a mystery.  Upon finding a bottle and opening it, you gain access to one piece of concept art, and this mechanic of hiding extra features I am perfectly okay with.  In one of the pieces of concept art, you see the entirety of The Maw, submerged in water with only the top section breaking water, similar to the final screen in the end of Six's story.  It really gave The Maw a sense of scale, added to the in-between cinematic in Six's story with her scaling the outside of the structure.  I felt that seeing this structure gave me a better understanding of what The Maw was, kind of, but it still gave me more of a sense of placement than before considering how many floors you move up and down, but to have it locked behind a hidden item was a little disappointing.  Until I found my way to what appeared to be The Lady's study or music room that contained a model of The Maw, displayed similar to how a Bond villain might have a globe displayed; it was essentially in a globe stand.  The painting of The Maw's lighthouse in the same room being more of an indication that the the model in the room really was The Maw.  This was definitely an "Ah, I'm glad I know what I'm looking at here" moment.

Did I enjoy The Secrets of the Maw?  Kind of, but leaning more towards I was annoyed and left wanting more.  I love the visual aesthetic of Little Nightmares but the overall lack of information left me feeling like I was just moving between rooms and avoiding enemies that I could not explain.  Maybe I just need to pay more attention, as I know that was one of my issues before I was able to enjoy Dark Souls.  I could see myself playing through a second time as knowing the solutions to puzzles would help with noticing the surroundings more instead of getting frustrated.  Plus there are a few more pieces of concept art that I have not yet unlocked for both Six and the Kid.

Maybe after I play Little Nightmares 2, but I am pretty sure that is going to happen.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S.  Potential Spoilers.

So the issue with the Shadow Children as mentioned above.  These are enemies similar to The Lady boss fight in Six's story.  They appear out of the shadows and charge you.  When you point your flashlight at them, they slow down and start sizzling.  But they also start slowly weaving this way and that, trying to get out of the light and back in the shadows, but are also moving closer to you in the process.  Facing off against one is not too bad, but when there are multiple, it becomes exponentially more difficult.  On top of that when they are within a certain distance of you, they lunge and if one of them touches you, you become possessed and essentially die, forcing the game to reload.  Again, as mentioned above, the load times in this game are atrocious, taking between 20-30 seconds.  So when you spawn in an area that is infested with Shadow Children and you have to fight them off while moving a chair into position so that you can jump off of it to open a door, but you die 10 seconds later, it becomes increasinging frustrating knowing that you are spending more time waiting for the game to load than you last spent playing.  I should also mention that there seemed to be an infinite number of these Shadow Children too so it was not like you could slowly pick them all off and then move the chair without any problems.  Oh, and one last thing, is that standing on the chair offered no protection as they would just lunge up at you and catch you.

P.P.S.  The real frustrating time was when I opened the door, but the chair was positioned in a way that was blocking the entrance to the door so I had to pull the chair away from the door.  And I was killed.

P.P.P.S.  Without getting into the ending of the game, I have mixed feelings about it, although they are mostly positive.  The things that bother me are that you witness a power of The Lady that was before unknown and it is presented in a way that it automatically happens, and then the immediate feeling of "Well what was the Kid's story even about then?"  Admittedly, I had a similar feeling about Finn & Rose's arc in The Last Jedi immediately after watching it but I later figured it out so this might require additional thought processing before making a final judgement.