What is Fortnite Known For?
Ask someone who doesn’t play Fortnite what they know about the game and they’re likely to mention a few things. There are all the funny emotes; no doubt they know that part. It’s got that dancing banana fella–he’s pretty cool. They’ll probably also call it a shooting game or, if they know the term, they’ll call it a battle royale game. It’s true that for six years, battle royale has been the centerpiece to Fortnite, but in that time, it’s also grown as a platform, with 70% of Fortnite players now also routinely playing in Creative mode, the game’s user-generated content sandbox with an ever-growing number and breadth of experiences.
Fortnite’s Growing Platform
But for anyone who didn’t yet know Fortnite was already more than a battle royale game, this week’s huge update, complete with three new games, beloved IP, and well-established studios, feels like a statement. Fortnite is changing, but its reign atop the video game world seems secure.
Three New Games
Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival come from Epic, Psyonix, and Harmonix, respectively, and they exist as new games found exclusively within Fortnite. After playing them myself at a press event ahead of their staggered launch dates this week, I’ve trained myself to not call them “modes,” as any one of them would make sense as a standalone game. It’s sometimes been the case where a game on another maker-game platform like Roblox gets so popular that an outside studio acquires it in a buyout. These new Fortnite releases are sort of the inverse of that. Brilliant studios have been tasked with building new games with the explicit purpose of expanding Fortnite’s ecosystem.
Rocket Racing
I played Rocket Racing first, which exists in a universe meant to blend both Fortnite and Rocket League. The logo shares a font with the latter, but as you drift around corners to gain boost and launch yourself toward the ceilings of some tunnels by driving on the wall, you’ll spot plenty of Fortnite imagery, too, such as the iconic llamas carved into burnt-orange canyons. Rocket Racing is an arcade racer that doesn’t stray too far from the enjoyable tropes of the genre. While I didn’t see power-ups on any of the five tracks I raced, I saw speed boosters, ramps, hidden pathways, and a surprisingly (and satisfyingly) high skill ceiling.
The game’s boost system uses a secondary charge that’s activated a moment after the initial activation. This adds a subtle but appreciable layer to choosing when to use it, because not only do you need to get that timing just right, but the more intricate maps don’t seem to have a lot of straightaways, meaning you may want to more strongly consider when–or if–to burn through your boost, since you’re liable to send yourself speeding into a guardrail in some cases when you do. Quickly it became apparent that there’s going to be a best way to race each track, and though the most competitive players will look to shave off milliseconds in the game’s ranked mode, it also works as a family-friendly racing game thanks to the mechanics that, like Rocket League, can be hard to truly master but have an invitingly low barrier of entry.
Lego Fortnite
Later in the day, I played Lego Fortnite, which I’d call the odds-on favorite to become the most popular game of the three. Lego Fortnite is a survival-crafting game akin to Minecraft and the many games it’s inspired in the decade-plus since it became a phenomenon. But like Rocket Racing, Lego Fortnite benefits from having a foot in both worlds: Fortnite and Lego. The game looks stunning thanks to Unreal Engine 5, and the procedurally generated worlds are 20 times bigger than the Fortnite battle royale island–and I was told this size may well continue to grow as time goes on.
But the added layer of Lego charm makes it an appealing time sink. New builds, recipes, and items unlocked early and often, but it never felt overwhelming because I had a strong sense of what I needed to collect or build in order to progress. That’s something that a lot of games like this get wrong– perhaps on purpose to preserve some mystery, but it can be really punishing for players not used to the genre. My Minecraft expert of a son will find Lego Fortnite easy to grasp, no doubt, and although my daughter will need help while she’s too young to read, she plays enough games that I think the clear UI signposting of what she lacks for a recipe will be enough to send her out in search of whatever it may be after some initial help from me or my wife. And if ever either of them don’t want to worry about the game’s survival systems, a more forgiving sandbox mode removes the resource scarcity and enemy threats and just lets them build and explore.