Epic's new game Fortnite looks like Team Fortress 2, is inspired by Minecraft

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Epic announced a new game over the weekend called Fortnite. It'll have a Team Fortress 2-esque art style and, according to Epic, is directly inspired by Notch's indie block builder, Minecraft.

Fortnite appears to revolve around building forts to hold off waves of creatures that attack during the night, or rather 'nite'. Whether the action takes place over two weeks is yet to be seen, but it looks as though there will be some creative building involved. In a tweet spotted by Eurogamer , Lead Designer Lee Perry says: "Minecraft was an inspiration for sure."

Perry also says that chances are high that "weapon crafting/traps, lvl system, underground exploration, Boss fights, team survival mode," and "rare loot" will be part of the game. He also tweets to say that Fortnite's building system is "not scripted or just boarding up existing structures," but won't be completely free form. "Minecraft let's you build ANYTHING, we are focusing on constructing 'buildings' specifically" he says .

Epic apparently haven't yet decided a release window or platforms for the game, waiting for a publisher to get involved before deciding how to proceed. We certainly hope the Minecraft inspiration will nudge them into releasing it on PC, as it looks like an intriguing new direction for a company that has a reputation for mostly making games about very burly men in power armour.

From the trailer, it looks as though Fortnite might follow Minecraft's 'build by day, cower in a corner by night' philosophy, with players looting a destroyed city for building materials. What do you think?

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.