As of January, over 40 million gamers have downloaded the fast growing game Fortnite, that was just released last year. You make have seen “#1 Victory Royale” on peoples TV screens taking up the majority of your computer screens. The game is already breaking records with over 2 million playing the game at once.

Fortnite originally revolved around players searching for resources and collecting them for a home fort and then defending that base they just built up. Then Battle Royale was introduced, which entails two teams working together to defend one shared base.  

“Since we launched Battle Royale at the end of September last year, to hear people say we’re basically one of the biggest, if not the biggest Battle Royale games in the western world in terms of numbers of player is amazing,” said Eric Williamson to rolling stone magazine, who is the lead game designer for the battle royale mode.
Epic Games, the company behind the game, is constantly considering the feedback they get from players and striving to improve the game. The most involved update was released just last week. The update included major differences in the map, the additions of new biomes, and created two play areas. The biggest change to the map includes two new cities.

The game designer, Sidney Rauchberger, stated, “I think things like increasing the density of the points of interest we have on the western points of the map. But one of the biggest, most requested things was adding a city.”

The other major improvement is adding an area to the map called Shift Shafts, which is a series of underground mines.

On top of adding two more elements to the playing field, the map is now broken up into a series of biomes.

The teams focus is on updating and improving this map, which means a second map won’t be added. They feel that a new one isn’t needed when there are so many things that still need to be done on the current one.”

Sophomore Ryan Stas, an avid gamer and player of Fortnite, is happy with the improvements they are making. “When my grandma first bought me the game, I wasn’t sure about it. Then once they added the updates, I became addicted. Now I play Fortnite every night. The game is very addicting. My favorite part of the update would have to be the adding the new biomes to the playing field. It makes playing with my friends so much more fun. Fortnite is the type of game I will play for years to come.”