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Fortnite is the first UE4 release, and a PC exclusive to boot

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Fortnite, EPIC’s foray into the survival sandbox and Minecraft style build’em up, is going to be exclusive to our lovely towers of hunky hardware and delicious software. Along with just coming out on PC, it’s going to be the very first showing of Unreal Engine 4, EPIC’s souped up new engine that they’re claiming will halve development time due to enhanced dynamic lighting and pre-built materials in the engine.

Fortnite is a co-op zombie survival game where you build your own Fort during the day, in preparation for the Night. I have absolutely no idea where they came up with the name, because clearly it’s got nothing to do with a two-weekly period. Or maybe it’s a pun, and the zombies are too weak to be a threat? They do look awfully silly with all the skin on their face pulled back into a hood, leaving the skull and the glowing eyes.

Actually that’s more threatening than silly. Good thing the game is full of luscious colour! Which makes it an extra nice introduction to Unreal Engine 4, which has supposedly overcome the issue of radiosity, where coloured objects have their colour spill out onto the objects around them. It’s one of the reasons grey and brown have been so prominent in recent games.

Here’s hoping UE4 brings the colour back. And as for the PC exclusive part, it’s difficult not to speculate that it’s simply because the aging PS3 and Xbox 360 just can’t handle the power of the engine, which could well be the reason Epic are pushing both Microsoft and Sony to soup up their next iterations so much.

There’s no release date for Fortnite yet beyond 2013, but Comicon is the first major showing of the game, so that means the marketing engines have started to spool up. Can’t be long now before they jump into lightspeed.