"While the addition of playable musical instruments is a benefit to Fortnite as a whole, Fortnite Festival has little to offer players beyond nostalgia, especially for those without access to dedicated peripherals. "
Co-op Multiplayer.
This review focuses on aspects unique to Fortnite Festival. For a comprehensive look at Fortnite as a whole, check out our full review here.
I must begin by saying I am a huge fan of rhythm games. I play them frequently on a variety of platforms, including Meta Quest.
To be honest, after playing rhythm games in VR via PCVR and Meta Quest, playing them on most other platforms (with a few exceptions) feels lacklustre, especially without access to dedicated peripherals to help make the experience more immersive.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and I am positive that if I had thousands of great memories playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero, I would have a much more favourable opinion of Fortnite Festival.
However, without those memories to fall back on, Fortnite Festival feels like a novelty, something I would play for a few hours before never returning to it.
That being said, I am willing to acknowledge that Fortnite Festival is pretty good as far as non-VR rhythm games go, and I am sure it would be a lot of fun to play with a few friends and Rock Band peripherals.
Fortnite Festival currently offers three sub-modes for players to enjoy.
In this mode, players perform hit songs by popular artists or original music by Epic Games.
Players can choose an instrument (such as guitar, keytar, bass, vocals, or drums) and difficulty level. The goal is to hit the notes accurately to earn points and climb the leaderboards.
This mode is similar to the Main Stage but adds a competitive element.
Players compete against each other to see who can perform the best, earning stars based on their performance.
While this is a good idea in theory, the wider Fortnite Festival Community appears not to be interested in it, with it having only 228 active players online at the time of writing this review, less than 5% of the number of players currently playing the Main Stage mode.
In this mode, players can make unique mash-ups using Jam Loops, key selections, and tempo adjustments.
However, I see no need for this mode to exist, considering that Jam Loops can be played in the Party Royale mode, which already has an established community, unlike Jam Stage, which has less than 750 concurrent active users for much of the day.
Fortnite Festival is a simulation video game developed and published by Epic Games, it was released on 9 December 2023 and it is Free-2-Play.
Fortnite Festival is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
As of February 2025, around 52,0000 people play Fortnite Festival on a fairly regular basis.
Fortnite Festival suffers from low activity, meaning that while off-peak matchmaking is possible in populated regions, finding full lobbies in less populated regions is unlikely outside of peak playtimes.
Fortnite Festival supports:
Fortnite Festival offers the following matchmaking options:
The Fortnite Festival in-game store sells:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Fortnite Festival is rated PEGI 12+ and contains:
As with every new mode created by Epic, regardless of how successful it is, Fortnite Festival benefits Fortnite as a whole and offers both first and third-party development teams a slew of new mechanics and cosmetics to incorporate into their creations.
In addition, the Fortnite Festival has allowed Epic Games to add a wide variety of instruments, emotes, musician skins, and licenced tracks to the game. These can be used in other supported modes and, in the case of Jam tracks, as custom lobby music and, hopefully, one day, as in-game background music.
While I am not a huge fan of background music with lyrics, I must admit I would not say no to playing a few rounds of Fortnite Battle Royale with the Deadpool remix of Like a Prayer, even if only for the lols.
Ultimately, Fortnite Festival is a lot of fun if you have fond memories of Rock Band or a soft spot for similar titles, but after playing rhythm games on VR, I must admit, randomly bashing buttons on a controller or keys on a keyboard just doesn’t do it for me.
For that reason, I cannot overly recommend it despite finding it a decent enough way to pass a few hours with friends.
We found Fortnite Festival to be a good game, meaning it is likely to be enjoyable for most players, despite having a few areas that could be improved upon.
