PEAK Key Art
Image: Team PEAK

All good things must come to an end, and PEAK - last year's co-op climbing mega-hit - is going out with a bang today. Or perhaps an eerie groaning sound. Teased for some time, Team PEAK (a collaboration between indie developers Aggro Crab and Landfall) has just rolled out the final content update for the game, adding two new haunted biomes and an alternate finale to the game plus a bunch more secrets to chase after.

Previously, every run through PEAK ended with a trek through two volcanic final areas - Caldera and The Kiln. Now, whenever the island regenerates at the start of each day, they'll swap places (and back again) with The Gloom and The Citadel. A haunted, foggy swamp and a trap-laden castle tower, respectively, both menaced by supernatural fog that players are advised to avoid. There's also a big secret plot-thread to pull on. Mysterious statues can be found in all biomes, somehow related to the original Scoutmaster, a recurring figure in the game but never really characterized much before. All that changes today, as he's now voiced by prolific indie developer Xalavier Nelson Jr, who voices the protagonists in I Am Your Beast, El Paso, Elsewhere and more.

I'm excited to see how long it takes players to puzzle out the specifics of this big new mystery, and what rewards will come from it. There's already some great hidden goodies in the game, like the golden Bing Bong idol you can find in the hidden tomb beneath the Mesa zone, which bestows invincibility to its bearer at the cost of being really dang heavy. And of course, there's an achievement for lugging it all the way to the finale and casting it into the volcano at the end.

Among the other fun new stuff in this update is a new, extra brutal difficulty mode for experienced climbers (the titular Final Ascent), which is apparently so secretive that even its name is a spoiler. This comes alongside some gentle nerfs to the penultimate, seventh Ascent, which they thought was a little too cruel and unusual, especially with a new goal to aim for above it.

There are ten new badges to collect with corresponding cosmetics, and a new category of luggage to find out on the mountain. Brightly-colored Clown Luggage contains the Lollipop, Cannon, and Balloon Bunch, and those items have been removed from the item pool in Climber Luggage cases. There are also several new items, including a jetpack (which seems incredibly dangerous and potentially hilarious), the mysterious Warp Fungus, a glider for crossing big horizontal gaps, and some more that they're leaving up to players to discover.

You can read the full update patch notes here, and if you or your friends haven't played it yet, you can snag PEAK for a hefty 50% off its already-fair £6.39/$8 price tag. There are further discounts if you own the excellent (and significantly less stressful) Big Walk, too.