Lego Fortnite is with us and from first impressions it is going to be a huge success. Combining two of the world’s largest brands – Lego and, you guessed it Fortnite, was both risky and ingenious.
We looked briefly at what we could expect last week but from just an hour with the game, before handing it off to a much more experienced 12-year-old Fortnite player was enough to suggest that everybody has got this right. And that’s a relief.
How many bricks do you need to build an adventure? All of them. pic.twitter.com/L4iMEIWQIS
— LEGO Fortnite (@LEGOFortnite) December 6, 2023
The success of other Lego videogames has sometimes been mixed – the ties-ins such as Lego Star Wars have been great fun, whereas some of the company’s own branded efforts have sometimes just missed the mark, but even if you are the least marketing-savvy person on the planet you cannot fail to see the potential here.
Fortnite is not exactly known for its subtlety when it comes to in-game microtransactions and the ability to sell a character skin to a child at 10 paces, usually for a healthy amount of cash – sorry V Bucks.
As the game finally dropped the inevitable queues to get into the servers would have been a frustration to many – especially on the younger end of the gaming spectrum who aren’t quite used to having to wait a day and a half to download a Call of Duty patch.
But once in the game, it is easy to see how clever the devs have been. Rather than incessant button-hammering and stick flicking in desperation to build walls to protect you from being sniped from miles away, Lego Fortnite has a more Minecraft feel to it, certainly initially. It’s more about building, building with friends, and keeping monsters at bay. Sound familiar much?
Ask me and I would always tell you, and argue to the point of death, that Minecraft is probably the most important videogame ever created – I won’t bore you here, but it is. Many have tried to copy its formula, but all have failed.
This feels a little different because it marries the feel of the cartoon Battle Royale with it and presents countless opportunities for collectability in the shape of skins, characters, and whatever else has doubtless already been dreamt up in the boardroom.
Will Lego Fortnite be permanent?
For all the reasons above, despite not being confirmed, it surely will be. This is a cow with cash written all over it, and as long as the player base doesn’t gradually migrate back to vanilla Fortnite, we are sure it will be here to stay.
How big is the Lego Fortnite map?
Epic Games says the current Lego Fortnite map is around 19 times bigger than the map currently in regular Fortnite, which will help make it more of an exploratory Minecraft-esque experience.
Featured Image: CillMc
