Epic’s indie survival crafting game saw its first update on Tuesday, smoothing out some of the new game’s rough edges and adding a wave of quality-of-life improvements.
We’ve been covering Lego Fortnite since its launch last month, when the new title attracted 2.4 million concurrent players. On the face of it, the game is a Lego-fied version of Minecraft, but the game actually blends in some very likable gameplay loops that players who loved laid-back games like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Valheim will find themselves right at home with.
Just over a month after its launch, Lego Fortnite content is starting to dry up for players who launched in December (including the current company). Unfortunately, the The first big update for the game It doesn’t add the wealth of new content that some players were hoping for, but it improves things across the board, fixing a lot of the small issues and quality of life complaints that early adopters of the game encountered.
First, Lego Fortnite makes it easier to get around the map by adding launching pads, a predictable element for long-time Fortnite players but a welcome one nonetheless. Launchers should make giant, ugly ladders a relic of the past while relieving some of the pain of traversing the game’s massive, procedurally generated maps without proper vehicles or steering wheels.
Players interested in building also get some tweaks to make things go more smoothly. Buildings will now automatically remove nearby vegetation and fit better on slopes, due to the difficulty of achieving perfectly flat ground. New floor, wall, and roof options have also been added, including smaller pieces meant to make building less daunting for anyone who takes the fancy.
Epic is also adding more Lego-designed figures to the game (Ahsoka Tano, Spider-Man, etc.) and a trio of new villagers (Bushranger, Rustler, and Tomatohead). Villagers will also be able to open doors, which is actually a big improvement considering how often they get stuck outside the castle gates and can’t get back into the oven to bake pumpkin pies late at night.
the Full list of fixes It’s quite long, so if you’ve been waiting for it it’s worth reading through the whole thing. Some big bugs need to be squashed now, including one where players were shown in the world stuck under a building (we never saw this but the Lego Fortnite Redditor was definitely aware of it).
In addition to specific bug fixes, improvements to stability, performance, and in-game physics should improve things for aspiring players who have exited the game out of frustration (shoutout to my fellow server who built a monorail for us!). Hopefully the cumulative effect of these changes will lead to a smoother experience, as the game feels a bit laggy for some players, even on high-end hardware.
There’s a lot here but the patch stops short of addressing some of the core complaints from the game’s early avid player base. Unfortunately, it appears that the servers are still limited to 15 villagers total, a strict limit that discourages expansion and building for a large multiplayer population. There are no new biomes yet, so there’s a lack of entirely new content, but it makes sense for Epic to nail down the basics before adding new ones to explore. It’s also not clear from the notes whether the fixes will alleviate the “High Complexity Area” bugs that many players have seen, even occasionally on modest builds, but we hope so. The game is great so far and we are looking forward to getting back to building the pizza oven and outdoor frosting cafe. It was also nice to ignore the siren song of the battle royale in favor of Lego Fortnite’s gentle gameplay and relaxed pace, which at its best evokes the magic of Animal Crossing New Horizons.
The game’s laid-back vibes are actually key to Epic’s very ambitious plans with the title, which joins Fortnite’s traditional Battle Royale modes along with Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival as standalone games available in the Fortnite ecosystem. This ecosystem is the name of the game and Epic is working on building some alternative support experiences to attract players who may not be the type to fight to the death.
These days, installing Fortnite takes players to a virtual storefront full of free-to-play experiences. Some of these are made by Epic itself, like Lego Fortnite, but most are “user created” using Epic’s massive game development toolkit. While many of the games within the game are designed by emerging amateur game designers, others are branded experiences, such as recent survival games from YouTube megastar MrBeast.
To broaden Fortnite’s appeal, Epic needs to cast a wide net, bringing in players beyond those who enjoy crawling around a cartoon map with a sniper rifle, dressed as Darth Vader. So far, Lego Fortnite is the most compelling alternative take on Fortnite – a game that’s likely to gain more momentum as updates continue.