Epic’s standalone survival crafting game noticed its first replace on Tuesday, smoothing out a few of the new sport’s tough edges and including a flurry of high quality of life enhancements.
We’ve coated Lego Fortnite because it launched last month, when the brand new title lured in 2.4 million simultaneous players. On the face of it the sport is a Lego-fied model of Minecraft, however the sport really blends collectively a couple of well-loved gameplay loops that gamers who cherished cozy titles like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley and Valheim will discover themselves proper at house with.
A bit of over a month after its launch, Lego Fortnite’s content material was starting to run dry for gamers who dove in headlong in December (current firm included). Sadly, the game’s first big update doesn’t add the large swath of recent content material that some gamers have been hoping for, however it does enhance issues throughout the board, fixing numerous little issues and high quality of life complaints that the sport’s early adopters have been operating into.
First off, Lego Fortnite is making it simpler to get across the map with the addition of launch pads, a predictable merchandise for longtime Fortnite gamers however a welcome one nonetheless. The launch pads ought to make large ugly staircases a relic of the previous whereas assuaging a few of the ache of traversing the sport’s large procedurally generated maps with out correct autos or steering wheels.
Constructing-oriented gamers additionally get some tweaks to make issues go extra easily. Builds will now filter out close by flora robotically and match higher onto slopes, since completely flat floor is comparatively onerous to return by. New flooring, wall and roof choices have additionally been added, together with smaller items supposed to make constructing much less awkward for anybody getting fancy.
Epic can also be including extra Lego styled skins into the sport (Ahsoka Tano, Spider-Man, and so forth) and a a trio of recent villagers (Bushranger, Rustler, and Tomatohead). Villagers may even have the ability to open doorways, which is definitely a substantial enchancment contemplating what number of occasions they get caught past the citadel gates and might’t get again to the oven for his or her late evening gig baking pumpkin pies.
The full list of fixes is fairly lengthy so in the event you’ve been ready for it it’s effectively price studying by the entire thing. Some large bugs must be squashed now, together with the one the place gamers spawned on the earth caught underneath a constructing (we by no means noticed this one however the Lego Fortnite Reddit was actually conscious of it).
Past the particular bug fixes, enhancements to stability, efficiency and the in-game physics ought to enhance issues for formidable gamers who bounced off of the sport out of frustration (shoutout to my server-mate constructing us a monorail!). Hopefully the cumulative impact of those modifications ends in a smoother expertise, as a result of the sport did appear to be catching and lagging fairly a bit for some gamers, even on high-end {hardware}.
There’s so much in right here however the patch does cease in need of addressing some core complaints from the sport’s enthusiastic early participant base. Sadly, it appears to be like like servers are nonetheless restricted to fifteen villagers in complete — a tough cap that daunts growth and massive multiplayer builds. There aren’t any new biomes but so wholly recent content material is briefly provide, however it is smart for Epic to nail down the fundamentals earlier than including in new areas to discover. It’s additionally not clear from the notes if the fixes will alleviate the “high complexity area” errors numerous gamers have seen, generally even on modest builds, however we hope so. The sport is a blast to date and we’re trying ahead to getting again to constructing that pizza oven and open-air frost biome cafe. It’s additionally been good to disregard the siren tune of battle royale in favor of Lego Fortnite’s cute gameplay and peaceable tempo, which at its finest conjures the magic of Animal Crossing New Horizons.
The game’s cozy vibes are literally key to Epic’s really fairly formidable plans with the title, which joins Fortnite’s conventional battle royale modes together with Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival as standalone video games out there within the Fortnite ecosystem. That ecosystem is the secret and Epic is working to construct out some various tentpole experiences to attraction to gamers who won’t be fight-to-the-death sorts.
Nowadays, putting in Fortnite drops gamers right into a digital storefront stocked with free playable experiences. A few of these skilled are made by Epic itself, like Lego Fortnite, however most are “user-made” with Epic’s beefy sport improvement toolkit. Whereas many video games inside the sport are made by budding newbie sport designers, others are branded experiences, like latest survival video games from YouTube megastar MrBeast.
To develop Fortnite’s attraction, Epic must solid a large web, bringing in gamers effectively past those that relish creeping round a cartoon map with a sniper rifle, dressed as Darth Vader. To this point, Lego Fortnite is Fortnite’s most compelling various providing — and a sport that’s more likely to construct extra momentum because the updates maintain rolling in.
