Hello! I’m Blake from the Ironwood Studios team and we’re proud to introduce Whispers in the Woods, a major narrative and gameplay expansion to Pacific Drive.
When Pacific Drive first launched in February 2024, players joined their trusty station wagon to brave the haunting, anomaly-filled Olympic Exclusion Zone. The game’s unique blend of driving, tense exploration, and scrappy car maintenance quickly resonated with fans of car and survival games alike. Now, we are excited to bring players back to the driver’s seat and back to the Zone in Whispers in the Woods, coming later this year for Playstation 5.
Return to the Zone
Whispers in the Woods takes you on a brand-new adventure back into the Olympic Exclusion Zone. Available after your first few hours in the game, the expansion can be pursued alongside your main campaign and explores the rise of a terrifying group of anomaly obsessed fanatics hidden deep within the depths of the forests.
With their appearance, the expansion brings a change to the woods of The Zone unlike anything you’ve seen before. Not only do new anomalies roam the forests, but massive effigies adorned with cryptic symbols fill the landscape as the game’s atmosphere takes on a darker more horror focused tone.
“From the very beginning, we knew we wanted to take the mysteries of the Olympic Exclusion Zone in a new direction for this Expansion.” says Cassandra Dracott, Creative Director at Ironwood Studios. “We had heard so much feedback and so many stories about the fear people had experienced in Pacific Drive and in With Whispers in the Woods, we knew we wanted to lean hard in that direction.”
It’s not just a tonally different experience either. We’ve added an entirely new fully voiced narrative in the expansion and with it, we are able to continue building on the world of the game and the surreal nature of the Zone. We’ll leave you to theorize what happens next – but it wouldn’t be Pacific Drive if we weren’t also giving you new experiences to have with your 4 wheeled companion.
Discover Artifacts
Whispers in the Woods brings more of everything you’d hope for in a Pacific Drive expansion. New items, car parts, cosmetics, junction types, and anomalies await. We’ve even added new behaviors to old anomalies to help keep you on your toes. The largest and most significant addition however, are the brand new Artifacts.
“As you collect these mysterious objects, you will have to contend with their unpredictable car and world altering effects, forcing you to constantly adapt and change your strategy on the fly.” adds Richard Weschler, Lead Designer on Whispers in the Woods.
Created by our mysterious group of fanatics, Artifacts are the expansion’s gameplay centerpiece. Inspired by our quirk system, each Artifact is imbued with a condition and an effect said condition creates. Perhaps every time you jump, your car horn honks. Maybe when your car horn honks it also takes damage. While some may grant you strange advantages, others will add twists and turns to how you play. Artifacts can even play off of each other to create chain reactions.
It is up to you to figure out which Artifacts are the right ones for your time in the Zone. No matter what type of Artifact you and your wagon find, two things are true: collecting many of them will be critical to your time in the Whispering Woods, and if you hold too many, much more dangerous things deep within the forests will slowly awaken.
A major expansion for new and returning players
Since its release, we are proud to have more than one million players globally. In the 18 months since launch, we’ve continued to support the game with multiple free updates like April 2025’s Endless Expeditions update, which added endless trips into the Zone, doubled the size of the radio tracklist, and added the suspend run feature.
Whispers in the Woods however, is the studio’s most ambitious update yet. With hours of new gameplay and story content, plus an explorable region close to one-third the size of the base game, the expansion represents a significant step forward for both new and returning fans and we’re incredibly excited for everyone to experience it.
“We see this release as both for our longtime players and a welcome sign for newcomers,” Cassandra adds. “If you’ve been driving through the Zone since day one, Whispers in the Woods is going to add a brand new, more terrifying take on the Olympic Exclusion Zone. And if you’re just starting out, this expansion marks the best version of the game to date with new systems and content to find and explore.”
Whether you’re returning to your familiar station wagon or starting fresh on your first trip into the Zone, Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods offers a haunting new journey and we can’t wait for you to experience it later this year on Playstation 5.
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Author: Blake Dove
