It only took one trailer for Lego Fortnite to convince me to redownload Fortnite again. Just watching the first gameplay trailer for the Lego meets Fortnite take on Minecraft had me thoroughly intrigued, wondering how Fortnite's beautiful-looking maps could combine with the satisfying visuals and mechanics of Lego games like Lego Bricktales. The result? Much more Animal Crossing than I expected.
It's now become a daily post-work ritual to dive into my personal Lego Fortnite map and see how many more of my self-set goals I can tick off before the night is done. While you do get some guidance from the mini-fig version of Cuddle Team Leader on what to do next, it really is more like Animal Crossing or Minecraft in that you're setting your own goals and trajectories in Lego Fortnite.
Initially, it was just about making myself somewhere warm and dry to sleep, with a little crate in the corner to contain the whole host of stuff I'd already started accumulating. But a little exploring and building later I unlocked the option to build a tiny log cabin, and suddenly other people were turning up quite fancying a cabin of their own in my little settlement. Recognizable Fortnite Battle Royale characters like Peely or Beef Boss waddled into camp in their cute Lego forms, asking for jobs and giving me advice on where to find cool resources, just like Animal Crossing: New Horizons delivered my starting villagers to a glowing island campfire and showed me the potential of island living back in 2020. It was quite the allure.
Brickin' it
It turns out that like with Animal Crossing there's a tier system of sorts when it comes to Lego Fortnite villagers, with some not only being rarer than others, but also some being better than others at certain jobs like building, crafting or treasure hunting. It also gates just how many villagers you can actually add to your settlement in one go, with you instead having to work to improve your town's level before you can start adding more permanent visitors. To do that means more additions to my village, more creating and crafting, and further exploration, whether that's figuring out how to navigate to hotter and colder climes or finding caves for specific resources.
What's interesting is that villagers also act as your NPC co-op pals too if you don't want to dabble in online play, which to me is a huge boon. While I might lure in my old Animal Crossing pals eventually, I would much rather while away the hours chopping wood and gathering marble to build my next abode in peaceful solitude, all the while knowing that a villager has my back when it comes to invading skeletons or hungry wolves. They can also take on jobs back at base too, so Lego Fortnite really does let you build a thriving, productive community in ways that Animal Crossing couldn't.
It scratches so many of the specific Animal Crossing-esque gameplay loops. The only thing it doesn't quite yet have the daily rituals I so associate with Animal Crossing: New Horizons, like checking the shops for the new stock, chatting with villagers, checking for visitors or finding the fresh message-in-a-bottle that always just so happened to wash up on the beach each morning. That may well be because I'm still in the early stages of Lego Fortnite of course, as it also has that inevitable early-game grind.
Ever since Nintendo pulled the plug on Animal Crossing: New Horizons in 2021, nothing has quite absorbed my attention in the same way but Lego Fortnite has such potential. It still makes no sense to me that Nintendo didn't contiune to capitalize on what was a global phenomenon back in 2020/2021 but if anyone has the capacity to continue to evolve such a game it's Epic and Fortnite. Although for now, I would certainly take offline support for even more Lego Fortnite adventuring opportunities.
