To know Fourteen days is to experience the ultimate fever dream and the mishmash of media that makes it up. The current season, Chapter 5, Season 3, takes war vehicles that seem straight out of a Mad Max movie, combines them with items from the Fallout games, and then adds a heavy dose of inspiration from, of all things, the band Metallica.
That’s how long the Battle Royale mode of Fourteen days seems to be a bottomless pit of collaborations that brought significant changes to the gameplay. The developers removed building and then reintroduced it. They turned the map back into a classic version (called Fortnite OG) last fall and then literally blew it up and released a new map. In the last six months alone, you could play as Greek gods or harness the power of the elements from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Seemingly no addition could be too much or too excessive for Fourteen days
Instead of relying on gimmicks, Reload foregoes all the fancy tricks and speeds up gameplay elements from the classic Fortnite Battle Royale mode. Instead of 100 people, each lobby contains 40 people, and the mode features a compressed map and faster gliding, which speeds up the game quite a bit. The developers have littered the map with chests so players can be up and fighting in no time. Lastly, Reload adds a feature where players will automatically respawn in the earlier parts of the game as long as one of their teammates remains alive. So now you don’t have to wait for your teammates to respawn you, and the average playtime is much higher.
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Image: Epic Games
From the outside looking in, it seems like a way to appeal to players who just want a good old classic battle royale shooter with fewer bells and whistles that comes with each season. Players won’t have to worry about someone getting away with the Metallica-inspired Ride the Lightning item – which lets players zoom across the map in seconds – or dealing with players looking to pulverize their enemies from the relative safety of a souped-up Mad Max-esque war vehicle. Most of the time in Reload will revolve around looting, maintaining health, and then – of course – fighting, as competitors keep spawning. The online communities that are active parts of the competitive community have already expressed their appreciation for the mode.
The developers behind it Fourteen days are in a strong but tense position in 2024. According to Newzoo, a company specializing in video game data, Fourteen days had the highest number of monthly game users in PC and console in May
As the game continues to attract more users, the development team must continue to appeal to a wider and wider audience of players. In my daily life, I play the game both with other competitive players who are trying to climb the rankings and with my 10-year-old cousins who may struggle with basic aiming and control skills.
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Image: Epic Games
The developers need to find a way to appeal to all of these players, and Reload gives us a glimpse into their future strategy. Instead of trying to force all players into a single battle royale field, Fourteen days will continue to offer different game modes. We have already seen this to some extent as Epic Games has released different types of games on the market Fourteen days Launcher, like the rhythm game Fortnite Festival or its selection of kid-friendly Lego games. Now it’s made a similar move with its main Battle Royale mode.
Today, players can choose between the regular Battle Royale mode with building, the Zero Build mode, and the two modes “Build” and “Zero Build” within Reload. This gives those frustrated with the current season a new option, and it seems to have paid off. The new mode attracted more than 1 million players the weekend of its release and has had a stable player base ever since. For now, the return to basics seems to be working.
