Ok, here’s to say, I’m a complete sucker for Lovecraftian themes, especially movies and videogames. Evoking Lovecraftian atmosphere in different settings is an experiment in itself, be it the surface of Mars, a shanty town, a remote village, or even a derelict oil rig in the middle of the North Sea—something which Still Wakes the Deep used to create one of the most unsettling experiences I ever had in a videogame.
And now, I get to experience the Siren’s Rest DLC that adds…something I guess to the base game’s narrative.
Still Wakes the Deep – Siren’s Rest is a short DLC developed by The Chinese Room and published by Secret Mode. It was released on June 18, 2025. But is it any good over the base game, or fall short of its performance? Let’s find out below.
Down the rabbit hole…again!
Siren’s Rest takes place in the year 1986, 10 years after the events of the base game. The Beira D oil rig is now a sunken iron mausoleum deformed by the sheer pressure of the North Sea depths. We play as Mhairi, whose job is to descend down into the light-less graveyard to uncover what exactly happened that day when the communications to the mainland were cut off. But the sunken wreck is far from silent; metals screech and shift around you at an unsettling pace. Something terrifying lurks in the dark, remnants of the incident 10 years ago.
Since Mhairi and her team, which consists of her partner Rob and their supervisor Hans, try to unravel the secret of the wreckage, most of the gameplay involves her swimming around, collecting mementos of the dead, taking photographs, and just finding her way through the steel maze. However, the DLC fails to evoke the same sense of dread as the main campaign. True, the underwater setting is a welcome addition that makes exploration claustrophobic and might trigger thalassophobia in some; however, it works to the game’s disadvantage as it makes exploration much slower than what the base game has.
After leaving the diver’s bell at the precipice of the trench where the wreckage lies, Mhairi connects an ‘umbilical cord’ that carries the wire that feeds her with oxygen, heat, and provides communication. What could have been a gameplay mechanic to swim around while taking care not to snap the umbilical cord, is thrown out of the window as the cord glitches through the environment wherever you go. It’s like the cord is never there and only serves as a convenient plot device in some scenarios.
Puzzles are mostly the same, save for one addition—the blow torch—that allows Mhairi to burn away rust that has gathered on some doors, valves, etc. One thing I liked in the DLC is that the game doesn’t prompt you where to use it—you just have to be aware of your surroundings. Apart from that, everything is more or less the same, with lots of slow-paced swimming and a lot less creepy factor than the main campaign.
In fact, Siren’s Rest is so short that it might as well feel like the extra ketchup packets you get with your burger—something you won’t even need to enjoy your burger! Think about it, it’s a Lovecraftian setting so no one EVER will get their answers to anything. Furthermore, Siren’s Rest has only one chase sequence with the human-turned Eldritch entities of the main campaign. And I could’ve completed the whole game in one sitting if I weren’t so bored to death by it. The base game literally gave me nightmares because I was playing it just before sleeping; meanwhile, Siren’s Rest was the reason I got a good night’s sleep.
Sound, Graphics and Performance
The voice acting is as phenomenal as the base game and you can feel the desperation and longing in Mhairi’s voice as she laments for her Dad who was among the Beira D crew that died that day. Despite the fact that there are only 3 characters in the game—Mhairi, Rob, and Hans—all of them give their best while delivering the lines.
The soundtrack…well…is almost nonexistent. Might be the devs thought that the absence of it would create a spooky atmosphere where the only ambiance is in the form of metal screeches as the wreckage is further pulled down the trench, but it only creates an overall boring atmosphere.
Visually, there’s nothing much that would set it apart from the rest of the games on Steam that utilize the Unreal Engine 5.4. Good thing, though, that I didn’t encounter any performance issues apart from the umbilical cord glitch (which might have been intentional, but it breaks the immersion)
Real Talk
I’ll be honest with you, Siren’s Rest feels like a rushed afterthought that seldom adds anything to the main campaign. Even the sole purpose of the DLC, which was to answer the questions of the base game, wasn’t fulfilled and ended in only 3 hours with a lazy ending. For a DLC this rough which is priced nearly as the base game, I would rather give it a hard pass.
FINAL RATING: 30/100
