Apex Legends leak suggests “Tropic Island” will be new battle royale map

Respawn is set to add a brand-new “Tropic Island” map to Apex Legends in the near future, according to new map-pack code strings added to the battle royale’s backend following the Season 6 update on August 18.

Little is known about the new ‘Tropic Island’ map so far beyond its recently-discovered string code. The string reads “MP_RR_TROPIC_ISLAND_DESC,” which is the same as Kings Canyon and World’s Edge in the Apex Legends core code.

In fact, the newly-added code is actually right next to World’s Edge in the same map-pack folder. The strings were uncovered by Apex Legends data miners Shrugtal and Biast12 soon after the August 18 patch went live.

Nothing else has been found in the code relating to Tropic Island yet, Dexerto has confirmed with the dataminers. This makes sense too; when World’s Edge was first added, it remained as the solitary map file for multiple patches in a row.

Apex Legends fans will certainly be excited to hear a new map has been added to the battle royale backend code too. Players were fairly disappointed when Respawn confirmed World’s Edge would be getting a “revamp,” instead of an all-new map arriving in Season 6.

The “revamp” news stung doubly as hard considering all the evidence that had been building for a new city-scape “Olympus” battlefield. It had been teased in the Season 5 storyline, and in multiple trailers and gameplay videos.

While Olympus may have been shelved for now ⁠— insiders have suggested it was never set for a Season 6 release ⁠— “Tropic Island” does have a little more evidence behind it.

• Read more: Respawn ships huge Apex armor overhaul in Season 6 update

The name certainly evokes a certain visual too. Kings Canyon and World’s Edge both boast sand and tropical swamps respectively, but this new “tropic” map could go some distance to combining those two elements together.

Funnily enough, a “tropical jungle map” is something Apex fans have been requesting for a fair while now too. In April, Redditor NizzyDeniro suggested a tropic map could have “dense” jungles with vines that work like zip lines.”

• Read more: All Apex Legends Season 6 World’s Edge changes revealed

They wrote they’d love to see “giant trees… for good sniping and stealth, long, mid, and short-range battles. Caves… lit by glowing crystals, and with holes in the ceilings. Shallow lakes… waterfalls… [and] a rotating sailboat that just floats around the map.”

Well, it looks like that could be a possibility sooner than expected, if Respawn does end up building on this “Tropic Island” map code. There’s been no official confirmation, of course, but it does seem to be on its way, for now.