One of the ways that Fortnite is celebrating May the Fourth, Star Wars Day, in 2026 is by unleashing a pile of new user-created modes and ushering in the Star Wars era for the Unreal Editor for Fortnite. Ahead of the launch of these maps, Epic Games gave us hands-on time with several of them, including a pretty compelling-looking Battlefront-style mode, a survival-horror mode in which you're hunted by Darth Vader, and a droid-themed tycoon map.
Epic Games has been gradually adding items and assets from various franchises, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Squid Game, and The Walking Dead, for use in custom Fortnite islands for a couple of years now. Star Wars, however, is the biggest and most famous property to join the party so far. Creators have had access to these Star Wars assets for a little while, and they'll be able to unleash their creations starting May 1. You should expect a flood of Star Wars-themed modes right from the start–Epic says there will be hundreds.
We won't presume to guess what all is in store for us from UEFN's many developers, since there's likely to be plenty of surprises on the way. But we'll take you through what we've already played, which should give you a pretty good idea of the kinds of islands that Epic believes will do well. We'll start with the one we're most excited about.
This mode is essentially a Star Wars Battlefront-esque deathmatch with capture points, and it's probably the closest any Fortnite Creative or UEFN mode has come to being its own full game. Galactic Siege has two maps at launch, with another coming in a few weeks--which sets it apart from the usual Fortnite deathmatch islands in a big way, since deathmatch islands with multiple maps are pretty much unheard of.
In Galactic Siege, capturing control points for your team and defeating enemies will let you unlock power-ups, like airstrikes, hordes of NPC helpers, or a lightsaber and Force powers. It's also a rare mode in which your character is just a soldier--either a Rebel Trooper or an Imperial Stormtrooper--instead of wearing your equipped Fortnite skin. While that might frustrate some folks, its creators said the restriction is a necessary thing-- the mode wouldn't really feel like Star Wars with Peely and Drift running around.
"We just came to a decision that to really feel immersed in the Star Wars universe, it's hard to do that when it's not a Star Wars skin, right?" said Chad Mustard, COO of Jogo, the studio that made Galactic Siege, in a chat with GameSpot. "I think players won't mind that at all, because they're in a Star Wars experience, and they want to feel immersed in that with the music and the visuals."
But don't think that means Galactic Siege opts out of the cosmetics game entirely. Like in Battlefront, you'll seemingly be able to unlock character skins through the mode-specific Beskar currency, which you'll earn as you play--but those cosmetics will only work in this one mode, and it will not sell those skins for V-Bucks.
Our demo was pretty laggy, which I was told was the result of the developers increasing the player and NPC limits for our preview. Assuming the launch version is more stable, Galactic Siege has the potential to be a big hit--especially if Jogo Studios is able to keep adding new maps for it. But that's not something they'll be able to do indefinitely, since Creative and UEFN maps have memory limits, meaning that an island can only have so many things loaded at the same time, as well as an overall size limit of just 2 gigabytes.
"It's not an unreasonable amount," lead game designer Jeremy Pedron told me when I asked if the memory limit has caused any problems. "When you deal with a bunch of creatives that want to try to take on as much as they possibly can, you have to find some sort of boundary, and that's a really good technical goal for us to kind of, like, make sure it's well under [the memory limit]."
While Galactic Siege isn't a genuine successor to Star Wars Battlefront just yet, it could become one over time. But its ceiling will depend on how Fortnite's metaverse ecosystem continues to evolve, and none of us knows how that will go over the next year, much less the next decade.
Escape Vader is a survival horror experience in which four players, as Rebel scavengers, must sneak around a derelict Star Destroyer and escape with some equipment, all while being stalked by Darth Vader himself. While you can slow Vader down by blowing up pipes, and distract him by shooting at him, you can't kill him. So it's essentially a game about walking around dramatically.
And as you might expect from that description, this mode feels a little half-baked. It has no real sneaking mechanics, you can't sprint, and you can respawn an unlimited number of times after Vader gets you. The mode is an amusing diversion, but not one that will likely have much staying power without more work. For now, it feels more like a demo than a full experience.
A "tycoon" game means something very specific within Fortnite. It's a genre of competitive Cookie Clicker-type games in which a group of players race to make their numbers go up the fastest. The conceit with this one is that you're building a factory, and you need droids for labor to make money so you can build more stuff, buy more droids, and make more money.
These modes tend to be popular with children and folks for whom Fortnite and/or Roblox are their main gaming platforms, first and foremost, since these modes are as much social experiences as they are games. See, for example, Steal the Brainrot, which is not a balanced or particularly interesting game, but it can be a fun thing to do while you hang out online with your pals while you grind out battle pass XP.
You can try out these maps and many, many others in Fortnite starting May 1.
Source
Epic Games has been gradually adding items and assets from various franchises, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Squid Game, and The Walking Dead, for use in custom Fortnite islands for a couple of years now. Star Wars, however, is the biggest and most famous property to join the party so far. Creators have had access to these Star Wars assets for a little while, and they'll be able to unleash their creations starting May 1. You should expect a flood of Star Wars-themed modes right from the start–Epic says there will be hundreds.
We won't presume to guess what all is in store for us from UEFN's many developers, since there's likely to be plenty of surprises on the way. But we'll take you through what we've already played, which should give you a pretty good idea of the kinds of islands that Epic believes will do well. We'll start with the one we're most excited about.
Galactic Siege
This mode is essentially a Star Wars Battlefront-esque deathmatch with capture points, and it's probably the closest any Fortnite Creative or UEFN mode has come to being its own full game. Galactic Siege has two maps at launch, with another coming in a few weeks--which sets it apart from the usual Fortnite deathmatch islands in a big way, since deathmatch islands with multiple maps are pretty much unheard of.
In Galactic Siege, capturing control points for your team and defeating enemies will let you unlock power-ups, like airstrikes, hordes of NPC helpers, or a lightsaber and Force powers. It's also a rare mode in which your character is just a soldier--either a Rebel Trooper or an Imperial Stormtrooper--instead of wearing your equipped Fortnite skin. While that might frustrate some folks, its creators said the restriction is a necessary thing-- the mode wouldn't really feel like Star Wars with Peely and Drift running around.
"We just came to a decision that to really feel immersed in the Star Wars universe, it's hard to do that when it's not a Star Wars skin, right?" said Chad Mustard, COO of Jogo, the studio that made Galactic Siege, in a chat with GameSpot. "I think players won't mind that at all, because they're in a Star Wars experience, and they want to feel immersed in that with the music and the visuals."
But don't think that means Galactic Siege opts out of the cosmetics game entirely. Like in Battlefront, you'll seemingly be able to unlock character skins through the mode-specific Beskar currency, which you'll earn as you play--but those cosmetics will only work in this one mode, and it will not sell those skins for V-Bucks.
Our demo was pretty laggy, which I was told was the result of the developers increasing the player and NPC limits for our preview. Assuming the launch version is more stable, Galactic Siege has the potential to be a big hit--especially if Jogo Studios is able to keep adding new maps for it. But that's not something they'll be able to do indefinitely, since Creative and UEFN maps have memory limits, meaning that an island can only have so many things loaded at the same time, as well as an overall size limit of just 2 gigabytes.
"It's not an unreasonable amount," lead game designer Jeremy Pedron told me when I asked if the memory limit has caused any problems. "When you deal with a bunch of creatives that want to try to take on as much as they possibly can, you have to find some sort of boundary, and that's a really good technical goal for us to kind of, like, make sure it's well under [the memory limit]."
While Galactic Siege isn't a genuine successor to Star Wars Battlefront just yet, it could become one over time. But its ceiling will depend on how Fortnite's metaverse ecosystem continues to evolve, and none of us knows how that will go over the next year, much less the next decade.
Escape Vader
Escape Vader is a survival horror experience in which four players, as Rebel scavengers, must sneak around a derelict Star Destroyer and escape with some equipment, all while being stalked by Darth Vader himself. While you can slow Vader down by blowing up pipes, and distract him by shooting at him, you can't kill him. So it's essentially a game about walking around dramatically.
And as you might expect from that description, this mode feels a little half-baked. It has no real sneaking mechanics, you can't sprint, and you can respawn an unlimited number of times after Vader gets you. The mode is an amusing diversion, but not one that will likely have much staying power without more work. For now, it feels more like a demo than a full experience.
Droid Tycoon
A "tycoon" game means something very specific within Fortnite. It's a genre of competitive Cookie Clicker-type games in which a group of players race to make their numbers go up the fastest. The conceit with this one is that you're building a factory, and you need droids for labor to make money so you can build more stuff, buy more droids, and make more money.
These modes tend to be popular with children and folks for whom Fortnite and/or Roblox are their main gaming platforms, first and foremost, since these modes are as much social experiences as they are games. See, for example, Steal the Brainrot, which is not a balanced or particularly interesting game, but it can be a fun thing to do while you hang out online with your pals while you grind out battle pass XP.
You can try out these maps and many, many others in Fortnite starting May 1.
Source