Fortnite expands its horizons this week with a Lego building game and a Rock Band successor

techcrunch.com:

The first fruit of the partnership between Fornite-maker Epic Games and Lego is due out this week — along with a host of other games within a game that expand Fortnite’s horizons considerably.

The hybrid Lego/Fortnite experience is billed as a “survival crafting LEGO adventure” and will debut this Thursday, December 7. Lego Fortnite, which Epic describes as its own live service game, is designed for ages 10 and up and players can probably expect a big multiplayer game world that incorporates building elements of the Lego games.

The new kid-friendly Fortnite experience will “encourage creativity, experimentation and collaboration through play,” which could make for a pretty different experience from the chaotic and zany but tense-by-definition battle royale. The companies aren’t sharing much else about what to expect from gameplay, the map or its mechanics yet beyond a few general teaser images.

Epic and the company synonymous with clicking together fun little bricks first announced their partnership in April of last year. At the time, the companies said they were teaming up to build “a fun place for kids to play in the metaverse” in a long-term collaboration. A year and a half later, the term “metaverse” may have fallen out of vogue — blame Meta’s flopped rebrand for that one — but online multiplayer games, customizable avatars and in-game goods probably haven’t approached peak popularity yet.

Beyond Lego Fortnite, Epic also just announced Rocket Racing, a “supersonic arcade racer” by the team that created Rocket League, and Fortnite Festival, a music game from the makers of Rock Band that lets players perform on stage “with hit music by their favorite artists.” Lego Fortnite might be the star of the show, but Epic is