Fortnite’s creative mode is home to a lot of clever player-made maps, challenges, and obstacle courses. Yesterday, a team of creators released a full-blown Creative campaign called The Fourth Dimension, which features a storyline, multiple maps, and lots of mysteries to uncover.
YouTuber Mustard Plays, who showcases Creative maps on his channel (and is also the brother of Epic’s creative director Donald Mustard), announced The Fourth Dimension yesterday. Called “the first full game ever made in Fortnite,” it was developed by Mustard and members of the Fortnite Creative maker team TeamCre8. Mustard says the game is a 6- to 10-hour experience across six maps. The story is a sci-fi mystery set after a climate collapse; there are puzzles to solve and many secret areas, including a secret final level that “tells the full story.” The introduction is accessible via the Creative hub, with codes for the rest of the maps hidden in Mustard’s announcement video.
I played the tutorial and some of the first level last night. It’s a huge creation, with beautiful ruined vistas and a story cleverly told through text. I appreciated the way the tutorial gave narrative backstory to Fortnite staples like Chillers and Boost Pads. My time in the first map was, I’ll admit, deeply frustrating, with many moments revealing the limitations of Fortnite as an engine for a non-Fortnite game. A platforming section felt imprecise. During a puzzle involving bouncing a Baller vehicle, I managed to get the Baller irreparably stuck. The Fourth Dimension has save points, but respawning didn’t undo the puzzle, and I was unable to progress without starting over.
Mustard has made a walkthrough video, which I found myself turning to multiple times both because I needed help and because I quickly lost patience with some of the more fiddly aspects of the experience. But it was cool to find my usual Fortnite avatar becoming the star of a sci-fi mystery, as well as to see Fortnite’s mechanics recast into a story that has nothing to do with the base game. The creativity and ambition of The Fourth Dimension come through, and make it worth taking a peek at if you’re curious.