The Final Ascent, the last major update for co-op climbing game Peak, is live, and its patch notes double as the developers' explanation for why nothing of its size will follow. Rock Paper Shotgun reports that the update was teased a week before release by Landfall and Aggro Crab, the two studios that built the game together.
What The Final Ascent adds
The headline additions are two variant biomes. Gloom is a heavily fogged area of oversized trees, bells and spikes, while The Citadel is a castle interior built around swinging spiked balls, concealed arrow traps and timed spear floors. The update also adds Ascent 8, the run the update takes its name from, which the studios have deliberately left undescribed so that players reaching it find out for themselves.
A new luggage type arrives alongside them. Clown luggage collects a set of what the patch notes call wacky items, including the lollipop, cannon and balloon bunch, and those items no longer appear in standard climber luggage. Three further items are added outright: a jetpack, a glider, and warp fungus, which the notes describe only with an instruction to throw it and see what happens.
Scattered across the island are new statues the studios describe as mysterious and connect to the Scoutmaster's original lost troop, the closest thing the update offers to a narrative thread.
Why it is the last one
As we've said since the beginning, PEAK isn't a live-service-game. We intended to release a game that was 'finished' on launch, and any major content updates would be the cherry on top. We don't wish for it to become a 'forever game' where we constantly add new things that bloat the experience, just to try to keep people's attention.
The studios add that the game's success meant they had already spent considerably longer on it than planned, and had added far more than originally intended. With that work finished, both Landfall and Aggro Crab say they want to return to their own separate projects, which ends the update cycle rather than pausing it.
