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Staff
Written By
Staff
Published
3/3/25

LET’S PLAY: BIOMES+ 1.2

Join us as we explore Biomes+ 1.2 by Shapescape

Biomes! Can you imagine what Minecraft would be like without biomes? It would have to be set in an empty white void, and we’d have to legally change the name of the game to EmptyWhiteVoidCraft. And no one wants that. Well, maybe a few odd people want that, but we think it’s best we just safely ignore them.

Anyway, we’re not here today to talk about an ill-advised game drop that removes all the biomes from the game (don’t worry, there’s a 53% chance we’re not secretly working on that). On the contrary, we’re here to talk about a Minecraft Marketplace world that ADDS biomes to the game - Biomes+ 1.2 by Shapescape!

Pic of desert with camel on the ground

We cannot WAIT to be as relaxed as that camel

This world promises a ton of new biomes, including maple forests, golden aspen groves, baobab savannas, enhanced swamps, and more! 

Anyway, I spawn in none of these. Oh.

Instead I’m in a hot air balloon with this guy:

pic of person seen from front with text above: Biomes Guide

Er… hi. Nice glasses!

This is a handy guide who offers to start you off with lots of useful starter equipment. Unlike normal Minecraft which starts you off with absolutely nothing - seriously, how is this game popular again?

Now we could just keep quitting this game and creating new worlds until I spawn in one of the new biomes. But after a few hours, this gets boring, and we realise we’re missing the point. We should discover the new biomes through exploring!

And that’s been made easier than ever thanks to these outposts that are now scattered through the Overworld:

pic of tower in green landscape

They sorta kinda remind me of Pillager outposts, except these are full of useful items instead of Pillagers who want to kill you. Good improvement!

We find lots of arrows, some rotten flesh (er, great), and some enchanted weapons. Score!

But best of all, we found a spyglass. This isn’t just a telescope with unrealistic job expectations. It’s actually a fantastic little golden tube that lets you see stuff that’s far away and with a cool little glassy filter effect.

It’s perfect for checking out some of the new mobs this adds to Minecraft. Especially the shyer ones…

pic of snail

Snail! This slimy cutie will hide in its shell if you get too close. Awww.

pic of hedgehog

Hedgehog! This spiky cutie will also hide if you get too close. Do we smell or something? Please don’t answer that.

pic of seagull

Seagull! Swoops through the skies and, unlike in horrid real life, won’t steal your chips.

Another helpful tool for exploration is the guide book. This picture book is essentially a catalogue of loads of the wildlife you can find. Except all the pictures are MISSING.

We were about to angrily write our own book full of furious pictures of ourselves and send eight million copies to the developers, when we realised that unlocking the pictures in the book is actually an exploration-based game mechanic:

pov, an open book with text

Look at that useless missing image page. Doesn’t it just make your BLOOD BOIL? Of course it does. Luckily, all you have to do is find the subject and…

pov, open book with text, with overlay text that says NEW PAGE

…Voila! That’s French for ‘it’ll unlock a nice color image of what you found in your guide book’. We think. We… may have failed French at school :,(

That book is a great incentive to explore and to punch everything you see (which, luckily enough, is two of our favorite things to do). 

But you’re not reading this because you want to know more information about magic books. You’re reading this because you want to know what’s in the next game drop and clicked this story by mistake. Er, we mean, you’re reading this because you wanna see what new biomes it contains.

Fear not, impatient traveller - we found loads!

pic of hot spring

Hot springs! Look at that steam fly!

…What’s that? You were expecting more screenshots and biomes? Well - heh - funny story. We kinda found the hot springs so relaxing that we ended up staying here instead of doing any more exploring.

…What?

Oh very well fine. Let’s keep exploring before we get fired. Moan moan grumble grumble…

pic of tower, seen POV, green landscape

Hey, another one of those helpful outposts! And it has some new friends insi… uh oh.

In our travels, we see a lot of subtle changes to the usual Minecraft world. Like trees with golden leaves. And blocks you often find in the Deep Dark hanging out in the Overworld like it’s no big deal. How mysterious…

Still, it’s cool seeing an Overworld we’ve explored so many times get a makeover. Even if it’s a potentially incredibly dangerous one. Because we’ve just spotted THIS on the horizon:

POV looking out over water, seeing the shore and tower

What could be making that much smoke? A BBQ that’s gotten out of hand? Our house burning down because we left our pet Blaze unattended (yes yes, we know we should have gotten a puppy - but it seemed like a great idea at the time)? 

More intrigued by the smoke than worried for our own wellbeing, we follow the plume of smoke and realise it leads to a volcano!

pic of smoking volcano, nice weather

Naturally, the only sensible thing to do is climb up and take a look inside. And the cool thing about climbing a volcano is the further you get up, the harder it is to hear all the boring ground-dwellers shouting “stop stop you fool!”. 

Ah, peace and quiet at last! Well, if you ignore all the bubbling of this lava

pic of lava inside a volcano

Er, we’re not sure why we didn’t see this coming.

Biomes+ is available now on the Minecraft Marketplace or by clicking this lovely line of green text. And we’ve barely scratched the surface! There’s loads more biomes to find and mobs to discover. Not for us, though, because our guide book is currently enjoying a lava bath inside that volcano. Along with us. Anyway, see you next month! Blub blub blub…

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