| — Official Little Nightmare website |
The Lair is the second area Six passes through in Little Nightmares. The Janitor will be encountered frequently in this area. Six and the Runaway Kid, as revealed in a cutscene from the DLC chapter The Depths, will both be captured by him and imprisoned in cages.
Description
This place appears to be the storage section of the Maw, housing several props like furnitures. The lair also exhibits different locations such as a room to survey different parts of the ship, a centre where the Janitor wraps up children to be sent to the kitchen on a hook line, a room filled with clocks, and a library with a hanging piano up above.
Adult-sized shoes are dumped into an area where an unseen monster lurks within. The Janitor appears to reside here, as evident by his room located within the lair. The lair is interconnected with the prison, and all floors within are accessible with an elevator.
Solution
Six must traverse through the Lair while avoiding its long-armed resident.
Six must jump down carefully to reach the key.
Six needs to climb up the stairs all the way to the top and through the window into a bedroom. By dragging a briefcase close enough, she will be able to grab a lever to the right which will reveal a murphy bed. Climbing it will allow her to reach and climb the dresser drawers and then onto the highest shelf. To safely land on the desk where a key is resting, she has to first jump on the next closest dresser, then onto the desk. She can then toss the key onto the ground and jump onto the bed before getting back to ground level. Six must then grab the key and push her way through the secret door cut in the wall. From there she'll find a locked door. Six cannot jump while holding a key so she must first throw it onto the step and then climb up herself. She can then unlock the padlock and proceed to the next room.
Six can throw objects to press buttons normally out of her reach.
There Six will find a toy cymbal monkey than she can pick up. Throwing it against the button on the wall will bring up an elevator. Before entering it, she needs to pick up the monkey again, and throw it at the button on the inside to go down one floor.
Six took the bait.
Once at the bottom, Six needs to head left through a ventilation shaft but will shortly after begin experiencing hunger pains again. If she keeps walking she'll eventually feed on a piece of meat in a cage. This will turn out to be a trap as the Janitor will close the cage's door with Six inside.
Six must swing off the pulley to make it past this door.
Six will wake up in her cage as the Janitor drags away The Runaway Kid. To escape, she must charge against her cage towards the left four times which will knock it towards the ground and pop the top off. Her only escape from this room is through a door that only remains open while somethings tugs on the pulley. Six must drag the smallest cage on the ground under that pulley so that she can climb and reach it. Once the door is fully open, she must swing towards the right as far as she can then jump and run through the door before it closes again. Once the grid comes down, Six can climb it to reach the floor above and leap to the right above the gap in the floorboards.
The Janitor has been alerted to Six's presence.
By passing through a small opening in the wall, Six will enter a room filled with rolls of burlap. Here the Janitor is working at a table wrapping corpses of children and placing them on hooks to be sent to the Kitchen. The floorboards will creak if Six steps on them, alerting the Janitor of her presence, but some of the burlap has been laid out on the floor which will absorb her footsteps. Six can sneak towards the burlap lying next to the cages. This will require walking on the floorboards which will alert the Janitor, but as long as Six makes no additional sounds, she can keep walking and hide in the open cage. The Janitor will search the room for a little and then get back to work. Once he does, Six can climb on top of the cage and make her way towards another same gap in the wall to the next room, again alerting the Janitor. She must sneak towards the back of the room until the Janitor loses interest. Once he gets back to work, Six must grab the lever and insert in its matching socking so they can pull open the trap door. This is very loud and the Janitor will notice but there should be ample amount of time for the door to open wide enough for Six to jump down.
Six being pursued by the Shoe Monster.
By crawling through the vents towards the right, Six will encounter a vast chamber filled with large shoes. She must leap onto the first briefcase and then take a running jump towards the next one. When Six makes it past the bucket hanging overhead, the Shoe Monster will begin charging towards her from the upper left corner of the chamber. Six cannot run through the shoes but as long as she keeps pushing through the shoes in a direct route and does not stop, she'll reach the next briefcase fast enough and can climb onto it to safety. Immediately after that, Six must take another running jump towards the stack of briefcases in the back, then once again towards the last briefcases stacked by the exit on the right and climb to safety. While the Shoe Monster cannot climb briefcases and cannot knock Six back into the pile of shoes, if it manages to catch her it will result in an instant game over.
After making her way through the doorway, Six will be back in the room with the hanging rats where she was captured earlier. After crossing the room and walking up the stairs, the Janitor will descend from the ceiling. Six must run through the ventilation shaft back to the elevator, and will need to slide under one low pipe along the way. Once in the elevator, Six must hide in the box in the back right-hand side. The Janitor will enter shortly after and press the button causing the elevator to go back up. Once the ascent ends, two Nomes will distract the Janitor and he will give chase, allowing Six to exit the elevator safely.
Six can climb this wooden floor support like a makeshift ladder.
In the next room there is a box of toys hiding a loose wooden floorboard. Six can push the box off the plank which will let her drop into a hidden floor below. After climbing over the wall, Six can climb back atop the floorboards using the wooden floor support as a ladder. There she will find another toy cymbal monkey that she should toss across the room to distract the Janitor. Once he goes to investigate, Six must crawl throw the small opening on the floor and, while staying on the carpet, navigate through the wooden dolls to reach the drawers. Doing so will knock over a metal music box that will give away her location, but as long as Six keeps climbing she will reach the top of the drawer out of the Janitor's reach. As Six climbs onto the next shelf and pushes the box out of the way of the vent shaft, the Janitor will exit through a door into the next room.
Navigating the vent shaft will bring Six into a room with broken clocks that the Janitor will be spotted exiting. To continue, Six must push open a wooden door leading to the next room. This will cause a grandfather clock to get knocked over, creating a lot of noise that will alert the Janitor. At regular intervals, the room will ring loudly with the chimes of the clocks, which will force the Janitor to shield his ears. While this is happening, Six should grab a shoe and position herself by a button across the room. She must wait until another round of clocks chime, then immediately toss the shoe towards the button to open the door. While the Janitor is still shielding his ears, she must quickly run down the hall towards the next door which she can squeeze herself through.
Six must distract the Janitor with a TV set.
Six will find herself in a room with piles of hard cover books. She must cross this room and climb the desk on the other side, and continue climbing the book shelves until she's on top and at the same level as a hanging piano. Once the piano sways to the far right, she must run and jump onto it. Once the piano swings back to the left, she can jump again to grab and climb more bookshelves to the left. The Janitor will be waiting at the top of those shelves, patrolling more shelves where jars, toys and more books are being kept. Six must climb the shelves and cross the wooden boards connecting them like bridges. She must be careful not to knock over anything that would give away her position, but can also toss various objects to distract the Janitor. Once across the room, there will be another stack of books leading to a small opening to the next room. Six must climb it to gain access, in which she will find a crank and a television. Six must turn on the television to lure and distract the Janitor. Once he opens the door to the room, she can grab the crank and sneak back to the crane, this time by crawling through the empty shelves closer to the floor. Using the crank in the crane will lift the piano higher up but will also alert the Janitor. However it will take time for him to navigate the shelves again, allowing Six to bring the piano higher enough so she can jump back on (as long as it swung back to the left first) and reach the shelves on the other side.
Six can use this laundry cart to shield the steam.
Crawling through another vent will bring Six into a room with a cart sitting on rails. She must push the cart onto the blowing hot steam to shield it, climb over it, then continue pulling it until it's at the end of the railing. Once there Six can climb onto the cart and jump onto the door handle leading to the next room. She has to keep holding onto the handle until the door swings all the way because almost all of the next room's floor is missing. Crossing the room will bring Six to another vent filled with pipes.
The Janitor will try to reach for Six using these holes in the wall.
Once she approaches some holes in the wall, the Janitor will reach through to try and grab her. Six must wait for the Janitor's left hand to feel the upper pipes so she can crawl underneath and safely make her way to the end of the vent.
Once the Janitor is defeated, Six can continue to the next area.
Once Six jumps out of the vent onto a pile of laundry, the Janitor will burst through the door and immediately pursue her. Six must immediately run and slide underneath a watertight door with a cage lodged underneath it. She will find herself in a dead end where the Janitor will try to feel around for her. Six must climb onto the laundry basket or the stacked cages and wait for regular intervals where both the Janitor's arms will be away from the crushed cage. When the cage is clear, she can jump down and grab a piece of the cage and pull it free to weaken it. Doing this once will cause the Janitor to temporarily withdraw and hold the cage in place. Repeating this a second time will cause the cage to collapse, letting the watertight door down and severing the Janitor's arms. As the Janitor screams in agony, a vent to the next room will open, allowing Six to escape and leave the Lair.
Survey room
While gaining access to the survey room is not needed to solve the game, it is a valuable source of information for new players that need to know what the Maw has in store for them. To gain access, Six must drag a chair onto a tile with ink smeared onto it. This will open a secret door hidden in a closet. Inside is a massive viewing screen shaped like an eye that can shift through five main settings. If the button is pressed a 6th time, the eye will close, but pressing it a 7th time will open it again, revealing the mirror that Six will later use in her confrontation with The Lady. A Nome will also be hidden in this room.
Trivia
- The Survey Rooms name in the file is the "LookingGlassEye". A possible reference to Through the Looking Glass - the sequel to Alice in Wonderland.
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Concept art and pre-launch images
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