The final biome update for Peak, last year's friendslop phenomenon, drops tomorrow, but its developers had to rely on a whole lot of subterfuge to keep its content secret.
The final update introduces two new biomes to Peak - The Gloom and The Citadel, which replace The Kiln and Caldera and will rotate in much like the other new biomes. But co-developers Landfall and Aggro Crab didn't want the new arrivals to be spoiled by dataminers, so they had to find a way to hide their names within Peak's files.
In a video on YouTube, developer Paige Wilson says that the team "worked hard to keep [the biomes] secret for months," but knew that "there's no reason to fight" the fact that dataminers will also be able to see upcoming information before it drops. Knowing they couldn't win in a fair fight, Wilson says Aggro Crab "decided to have fun" with their solution.
That solution was simple. Aggro Crab just added "a load of fake biomes in with the real biomes." In the weeks leading up to the final update, anyone who snooped around in the files would see all the real biomes, like Tropics and Mesa, but also seven fake biomes. Those included some legitimate-sounding options, like Grasslands and Temple, but also some sillier options, including Skyblock, Hell, Heaven, and Mars.
As if that weren't enough of a distraction, it looks from Wilson's peek at the files like the two real biomes were codenamed. 'Wisconsin' and 'Void' are also on the list of biomes that miners would have seen, meaning that even if you saw through the subterfuge, you wouldn't really know what you were looking at. The real Gloom and Citadel biomes will be available from tomorrow, and the final update means that Peak will finally be ready to get its console ports sorted after that.
