In the Fortnite meta-game, players can create structures on a private island and share them with up to 16 players for various multiplayer game modes with customizable rules. Players can place, copy and paste, move and erase objects, including ground tiles, items, and game features. There are limits to the amount of structures on an island. Players place objects from a palette with items of their choosing. They can also choose to build from predetermined structures like buildings. Fortnite Creative loads into a lobby island from which other islands can be accessed, most prominently those deemed popular by Epic Games and in the community. Each player can have up to four private islands. In the game, players can walk, jump and fly. Players edit the world using a mobile phone that their character holds in the hand. After a minigame is played, the island is reset to its previous state. The islands can be nominated to appear in The Block, a 25 × 25 tile area in Fortnite Battle Royale, which replaced Risky Reels in the top right corner of the map in season 7. In season 8 The Block was moved to the northwest of the map, replacing the motel.
Development
During the development of Creative mode, Epic Games prioritized completing quickly over creating a perfect mode upon release. Because of this, there were several bugs upon release. Due to their focus on speed, Epic Games created the prefabs system, instead of the full selection of blocks seen in other creative mode games. Epic Games was able to launch Fortnite: Creative earlier than planned. Epic has updated creative mode several times since it was launched, fixing bugs, adding new buildings, and new island types. A scoreboard was added during the 8.40 patch.
Release
The game mode was announced on December 5, 2018. A trailer was released and Epic Games partnered with nine YouTubers to create demonstration videos of the meta-game. Fortnite Battle Royale season 7 battle pass owners were able to play the game starting December 6. Players without a battle pass could join islands created by players with a battle pass. The meta-game was released for all players on December 13.
Reception
Fortnite Creative has been compared to the 2011 sandbox game Minecraft. Henry St Leger of TechRadar wrote that this Fortnite installment shies away from taking inspiration from the battle royale gamePlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds towards taking inspiration from Minecraft. He called the meta-game "basically a blueprint" and wrote that it could become a "serious rival" to Minecraft due to Fortnite infrastructure and player base. The meta-game was expected to keep a healthy player base for Fortnite. Polygon Ben Kuchera wrote that the game is "a powerful new tool" and that " your own maps and game modes, or just using the tools to create wild videos, is going to go a long way toward keeping Fortnite fresh for the foreseeable future." Players have recreated various structures in Fortnite Creative; these include the Star Wars starship Millennium Falcon and Castle Black from Game of Thrones. Others have used musical tiles to perform songs popular as Internet memes. Maps from other video games such as Counter-Strike and Call of Duty have also been recreated in the meta-game.
