Fortnite Caught Me in Its Loop

Fortnite wasn’t a game I was fully interested in. Fortnite has been in development for 5+ years and is now open for paid early access. This made me less interested than the first time I heard about Fortnite. However, once I saw videos and how much fun it looks – I decided to give it a shot without any expectation. Too my surprise, I’m loving it.

Fortnite has many genres that intertwine with each other, some that works and some that don’t. The moment to moment gameplay is a combination of resource gathering, base building, tower defense, and 3^rd person shooting. This all surprisingly works well, and has me hooked in its loop.

Gathering is easy and effortless – even with the “weak point” mechanic. Using those resources, you craft bullets, weapons, buildings, or traps. Like gathering, building is just as simple once you get the hang of it. The building blocks can be edited, making it flexible in what structure you and your team wants build.

The tower defense side of the game is more engaging and is always interchanging making every mission refreshing. It takes a while to get an understanding of where the enemies attack from – however, the locations changes throughout the mission. Once you understand the behavior of the enemies you can build tunnels and funnel them in with the traps that you and your team set. Seeing all the enemies grouped-up in a small space with all the damage numbers popping is immensely satisfying.

At the end of each mission everyone is given a chest. This chest is tiered and can be earn depending on how much your team was engaged in the mission. Whether that be – gathering, building or combat. Each of these actions have a bar to fill and is accumulative throughout the party.

Fortnite is still in early access, and that is very clear. Epic is releasing Fortnite as a “free-to-play” game next year, but for now players must pay a founder’s pack to gain access. Everything outside the gameplay is a mess. After a mission, you gain loot ranging from weapons, crafting resources, survivors, squad, and multiple experience points – managing all this is a pain to learn. These systems are cumbersome, but that’s mostly because the game doesn’t teach you anything about its menus.

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The loop of gathering, crafting, building, and shooting is hypnotizing. It is effortless and mind numbing which is refreshing after the horror show of its UIs and menus. Epic has something great in Fortnite. Adding all these mechanics from other genres is ambitious and interesting, but the difficult part of all this is how well all these systems work as a singular game.