Return to the office in Home Safety Hotline’s Seasonal Worker DLC to encounter winter-themed entries. As a yearly hire, you step into the role of Rebecca and are immediately thrown into the supernatural. Unlike the original game, there isn’t a slow ascent into the creepy creatures of this world. Which honestly, why should there be when we’re already familiar with what to expect?
Home Safety Hotline has always done well at challenging your intellect when deducing if a homeowner’s problem is normal or supernatural. This forces you to study each new entry closely when a new day begins. Which can be tedious but you need to know everything to properly solve a homeowner’s problem. Are they experiencing an avalanche or a living train rumbling through the night? Similar to the main game, some calls are obvious while others have me doubting myself.
It’s difficult when several entries have the same clues such as “missing children” or variations of that. This makes it tough to make the right call when you don’t have enough information to do so. And it doesn’t take long to realize you’re wrong due to a new cheer system in place. Each time you submit the wrong answer, your cheer level decreases from 100%.
This plays into the limited world-building hinting at an incoming phenomenon similar to the Northern Lights. Instead of worrying about upsetting the company, the fate of the world is now in your hands. Between the cheer system, Christmas songs, and bell ringtones, the developer does a great job of setting the mood. Even if there aren’t eerie videos or odd phone calls like before.
Despite that, I love the bizarre creatures developer Night Signal Entertainment creates. Which is part of what I loved about the background provided in the main game’s art book. Even when an entry is as simple as a dog suddenly getting a large red nose similar to a popular reindeer.
One thing that bothered me is that the Seasonal Worker entries aren’t separate from the previous ones. Since I didn’t get 100% accuracy, I can’t say if the DLC refers back to previous entries or not. However, it creates a cluttered mess when the majority of calls if not all center around DLC entries. It wouldn’t be so bad if I memorized each one, but some calls are tough and require re-reading. Which is why I started jotting down my own notes.
Home Safety Hotline: Seasonal Worker Review | Closing Thoughts
Fans of Home Safety Hotline are in for a good time with the Seasonal Worker DLC. It’s more of what players enjoyed for a cheap price and around two and a half hours of content. Which really depends on how quickly you solve those calls. It doesn’t lean into the analog horror nearly as much as before, but it’s still a fun puzzle to solve. Just don’t be surprised if the difficulty is sometimes erratic.
Review Score: 7.5/10 (Good)
Home Safety Hotline: Seasonal Worker was provided by the developer via a Steam code.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.