Anyone looking to return to the Olympic Exclusion Zone in the first Pacific Drive story DLC, Whispers in the Woods, are in for a surprise, as the expansion is out right now. In a surprise announcement, developer Ironwood Studios and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that Whispers in the Woods is now available, and the game has also been ported over to Xbox Series X|S consoles.
The expansion features a brand-new story and content that Ironwood Studios says is roughly a third of the size of the base game, and it includes new anomalies and horrors to discover.
Players can also experiment with several new gameplay systems, such as the Whispering Tide. This is described as a “mysterious force that grows more perilous” the longer you linger in the Whispering Woods, and to survive, you’ll need to equip specially attuned parts to your station wagon that can keep it at bay. Artifacts from Altars will also be found in the expansion, and these offer reality-warping powers that affect both the environment and you.
Pacific Drive made a lasting impression when it debuted last year, as the Indie survival game blended a well-crafted layer of suspense with a surprisingly chill vibe as you explored a creepy patch of the Pacific Northwest from the relative safety of your station wagon.
“With its wonderful depth in both story and gameplay, Pacific Drive is an early hit in 2024,” Mark Delaney wrote in GameSpot’s Pacific Drive review. “It sets out to create a world that fits comfortably in the New Weird genre but brings its own style and substance to it. Though the game can be especially hard to decipher, difficulty options help to counter some of its more overwhelming aspects. I’ll stick to bikes in my day-to-day life through the actual northwest, but in Pacific Drive, I’m up for another joy ride through one hell of a winding road.”
