Fortnite celebrates its first birthday with mini-games, cake, and more

Has it really only been a year since bubblegum battle royale took over the world? To commemorate the occasion, developer Epic Games has launched a Fortnite patch that makes a number of tweaks you’d expect from a weekly update along with a variety of ways to get in the festive spirit.

In terms of big-picture changes, Fortnite’s terrific playground mode is back, and it also adds a compact SMG gun. The playground mode still works the way it did last time, except the spawn rate of nearly everything from bounce pads to ammo boxes has increased. You can also now switch teams mid-game, and the match won’t end if someone leaves. The restorative slurp juice has been buffed, while the health of all material walls has been increased. You can read about all of these changes here.

The most exciting additions are the ones related to Fortnite’s first birthday. When you log on, you should see a handful of new “birthday” challenges, one of which tasks players with dancing in front of birthday cakes on the map. For this, you’ll get a cake cosmetic set. The bus has also been decked out with streamers and balloons:

These are the most visible changes that Epic actually lists on its patch notes. In typical Fortnite fashion, however, it seems that Epic has hidden some other goodies that it hasn’t told players about. For example, fans are discovering that the map is doted with mini-games that you can play together, such as skeet shooting:

There’s even a hidden Easter egg that commemorates a recent viral clip about a Fortnite rescue mission that goes horribly wrong. Nice.

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