Fortnite adds fancy pop-up fortresses and stadiums
Stuff your "just build" - just do the building for me
As a giant purple cube continues to roll across the island of Fortnite Battle Royale, burning runes into the ground as ominous teasers for events of the next season, this week's content update focuses on something simpler (though not smaller): a handy gadget you can throw to instantly erect a castle tower. The Port-a-Fortress is like a Port-a-Fort, right, but bigger. As someone who doesn't care to "just build", I welcome this handy doodad. But the 'Playground' sandbox mode has received something even fancier: a self-erecting stadium lined with spike traps and bounce pads. It looks ideal for inventing murderous futuresports, for those genre-defying daredevils into things like playing volleyhamsterball in Overwatch.
My Fortnite time is largely limited to the occasional cheeky round of Soaring 50s but I do enjoy seeing what players create in it, so I'm hopeful for some great futuresport to come from the deployable Spiky Stadium in Playground mode.
Rollerball with players riding shopping trolleys? Pinboing® with impulse grenades? We can but hope. I want to see these murdersports-within-a-murdersport.
As for the Port-a-Fortress, it instantly throws down a castle-y turret, as stylish as it is practical. I got a quick 50s round in and saw these going up all over towards, making the usual end-of-round sprawling shanty town even more impressive.
Oh, speaking of Soaring, today's update also added Soaring Solos as a limited time mode. As with the 50s variant, it's Fortnite but players can redeploy their glider any time they're falling a few metres, leading to folks whooshing all over and really challenging assumptions about mobility and safe distances.
See the Fortnite v5.41 patch notes for more on everything.
That big ol' purple cube is still rolling across the map, wee runes still dancing across its sparkling face and big runes still scorched into the ground at key places. The current popular fan theory is that the cube is headed for Loot Lake, which will become some sort of lavahell. Folks digging in data files have turned up volcanic pit models, horrifying clown skins, a dragon glider, and other odds and ends presumably to be used soon. Folks have speculated about it opening to a dark mirror universe or summat too. But hey, all of this is cobbled-together theories and game design fanfic.
The end of Fortnite Season 5 is currently looking less dramatic than the rocket and rifts at the end of Season 4. So far, at least. According to an in-game countdown, Season 5 will end next Monday, September 24th, so fingers crossed for something more dramatic soon. Even as someone who barely plays, I do enjoy Epic showy way of updating the game.
Fortnite Battle Royale is free-to-play through Epic's client.
Still trying to get to grips with Fortnite? Check out our Fortnite guide hub for more tips and tricks for the game. You can also find the latest challenges in our Fortnite week 6 challenges guide.