Still Wakes The Deep: Siren’s Rest DLC review – Submerged terror

If Still Wakes The Deep was “John Carpenter’s The Thing but on an oil rig”, then its newly-released DLC epilogue Siren’s Rest is “The Descent but under the sea”.

Horror fans all fell in love with Still Wakes The Deep’s utterly chilling scares when it released a year ago, and now The Chinese Room is back with an equally vicious DLC epilogue that aims to wrap up a few loose ends.

It’s set eleven years later after the events from the main game. It’s now 1986, and a diving crew has been sent to the underwater wreckage of the Beira D to recover any information about the disaster, as well as hopefully provide closure to the families of the lives lost that day.

You play as Mhairi, a member of the diving crew who is sent to find whatever information she can about what happened to the Beira D and its crew.

A large amount of Siren’s Rest’s playtime is spent exploring what remains of the Beira D; its labyrinthine corridors and unstable equipment chambers—all the while being surrounded by the crushing emptiness of the ocean, as well as a lurking threat hiding within the steel grave.

still wakes the deep sirens rest

Critics who felt the main game wasn’t challenging or scary enough probably won’t be swayed by it—there’s only really one big stealth section, with the rest of the expansion being heavy on the exploration and narrative elements. It’s also a lot different in presentation from the base game, with the entire thing being set underwater.

Likewise, if you were put off by Still Wakes The Deep’s simpler puzzle design and linear exploration, Siren’s Rest doesn’t do a lot to shake it up here. You get a few opportunities to divert from the main path, which is especially important because Mhairi is trying to find mementos from the Beira D’s crewmates, but the bottom of an ocean seabed isn’t a particularly interesting environment to explore.

Compared to the main game, Mhairi’s equipment is a lot different from Caz’s too. She has an arc cutter to get through blocked passages, a camera for recording the remains of deceased crew members, and undersea flares to light up dark areas.

still wakes the deep sirens rest

In many ways though, I wouldn’t be surprised if this entire DLC was picked up off the cutting room floor from the development of the main game.

From the way Mhairi’s story is structured throughout the DLC’s 2-hour runtime, it feels like a lot of this has been reworked from an axed framing story placed at key points in Still Wakes The Deep.

As you continue playing, it just becomes more obvious that Mhairi and Caz were originally intended as dual protagonists, with the story flashing back and forth between both time periods. Given The Chinese Room’s previous experience in developing stories with a heavy emphasis on the past and present (I’m talking about Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture here), it feels like a natural pitch for Siren’s Rest to have begun like this.

It’s understandable why The Chinese Room opted not to do that in the end, though. Siren’s Rest offers a completely different experience from the main story, so it would be pretty disorienting to place them both side-by-side. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a perfectly adequate epilogue story. But that first hour does feel a little slow, as we see Mhairi piece together things we already experienced while playing as Caz in the main game.

still wakes the deep sirens rest

Still, I can’t help but applaud The Chinese Room for delivering another spooky horror set piece that builds on what worked well in Still Wakes The Deep. Moving away from the tense body horror disaster vibes of the original game into a calmer, paranoid sinking feeling is the best way to continue the story.

Now that I’m no longer in Caz’s shoes, urgently trying to survive a deadly catastrophe, I’m given more time to stop and reflect on the game’s narrative and think about where it’s headed. And for that, it makes sense to make this your grand epilogue.

Still Wakes The Deep: Siren’s Rest won’t convince anyone who found flaws in the original—as the same issues persist here, but it’s a good recommendation to anyone who enjoyed the original game’s twisted body horror extravaganza.

Pros: Chilling atmosphere, good scares

Cons: Doesn’t really improve on criticisms of the main game, some pacing issues

For fans of: Still Wakes The Deep (main game), Soma, Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Score: 7/10

Still Wakes The Deep: Siren's Rest is out now on PC (version tested), PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Read a guide to our review scores here.