Still Wakes the Deep Siren’s Rest DLC Review: A Shallow Dive

There is something quietly unsettling about Still Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Rest, and not in the way the developers intended. As a piece of horror DLC, it barely registers. As a paid expansion to a game that built its reputation on atmosphere and dread, it feels more like a shallow cash-in than a meaningful addition. Playing through this 2-to-3 hour add-on left us not just disappointed, but genuinely annoyed.

For a title that marketed itself on isolation, emotional resonance, and submersive terror, Siren’s Rest somehow delivers none of those in satisfying measure. You play as a new character exploring a submerged environment that’s thematically linked to the original oil rig. The goal is to come to terms with grief, discover scattered narrative fragments, and endure a handful of slow-motion horror beats. The setup should be effective. On paper, a descent into a sunken realm shaped by trauma sounds intriguing. But in execution, it lands with a thud.

The first issue is the length. At just a couple of hours long, Siren’s Rest barely gets started before the credits roll. It doesn’t feel like a complete story, but rather a scrapped side chapter padded out into a standalone offering. Worse still, it is being sold as premium DLC, which adds insult to injury. What is offered here feels like it should have been a free epilogue or an extra tucked into the base game, not something sold for extra.

From a gameplay perspective, there is very little to engage with. You walk. You listen. You occasionally press a button. Gone is the tense survival discovery pacing of the original game. Here, everything feels muted and passive. The oceanic environment is beautifully rendered, yes, but after a few minutes, you realize it exists mostly for show. There is little interaction, no puzzles of note, and no real sense of danger. The horror elements are so subdued they may as well not exist.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment lies in how emotionally hollow the experience feels. The story attempts to explore grief and loss, but the writing is too vague and the pacing too uneven to create any real emotional payoff. Characters are underdeveloped, and the ending lacks any weight. Unlike the main game, which built dread slowly and made the player feel helpless in the best way, Siren’s Rest is a series of disconnected scenes that fail to build tension or empathy.

Technically, the DLC runs fine on Xbox. Performance is smooth and loading times are quick. But that does little to help when the content itself feels so empty. There were a few visual bugs, including a flickering texture and one moment where the camera clipped through geometry, but nothing game-breaking. Still, it all feels like window dressing for a game that has no reason to be sold separately.

There is no nice way to put this: Siren’s Rest feels exploitative. The content is too short, the story too thin, and the gameplay too basic to justify a price tag. Releasing this DLC with so little substance comes across as a cynical attempt to extract more money from players who enjoyed the main game’s far richer experience. That enjoyment, by contrast, came from careful worldbuilding, excellent sound design, and a real commitment to immersive horror. None of that carries over here.

If this had been offered for free, or even bundled into a definitive edition of Still Wakes the Deep, it might be easier to forgive. But asking players to pay for this feels like a breach of trust. It offers very little in return for your time or money. Instead of a rewarding return to a haunting world, Siren’s Rest leaves a bad taste and not the good kind of lingering dread that horror fans crave.

RATING: 1.0 out of 5 stars.

Still Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Rest is now available for PC and Xbox Series S/X.