Fortnite Festival is Rock Band without the plastic instruments

theverge.com:

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

Epic released a trilogy of new games inside of Fortnite this week. It started with Lego Fortnite, continued with Rocket Racing, and is wrapping up today with Fortnite Festival, developed by Guitar Hero studio Harmonix (which Epic acquired in 2021). It’s all part of an ambitious plan to turn Fortnite from a hit battle royale into a platform filled with all kinds of different experiences. And in the case of Fortnite Festival, it’s a full-blown music game inside of Fortnite. Think of it like Rock Band — but without the plastic instruments.

What that means is you’ll be hitting notes along to popular songs, but instead of doing that on a toy guitar or drum set, you’re using a game controller or mouse and keyboard. The basic flow is identical, though: notes move down a lane, and you have to hit (or hold) the corresponding button in time to the beat. I played a few songs earlier this week, along with other members of the press, and it felt like a streamlined version of Harmonix’s most popular games. Naturally, there were some added Fortnite twists: you choose an avatar like Peely the banana and can emote during certain sections of the songs.

According to Harmonix’s Alex Rigopulos, the plan is to treat Fortnite Festival like a live-service game, one that could potentially grow very large over time.

“The modes that we’re launching this week — you can think of it as the opening act of Festival, there’s more to come — they take familiar and beloved elements from our previous games, but are presenting them to the world in this social context of Fortnite, whic