'Fortnite' Playground Mode Returns This Week With New Additions, Improvements

Epic Games has announced that Playground mode will be making its return to “Fortnite” this week. The game mode will be available starting on July 25 alongside new upgrades as part of patch v5.10.

Playground mode was introduced by Epic last month and it is said to allow users to have a more relaxed gaming experience by providing them with their own private server. It also enables users to play around with their friends or practice their shooting/building skills. When players are eliminated in this mode, they will respawn back into the map. Playground was a limited time mode and Epic took it down from “Fortnite” on July 12.

The return of Playground mode on “Fortnite” will bring back all of the same features, but with some improvements and new additions. Epic has teased that the new version of Playground will provide players with team select options. This should allow players to efficiently battle one another and it should fix one of the biggest problems of the original Playground mode. Previously, players were able to edit structures placed by other players, which makes build battles a lot less challenging, as pointed out by Polygon.

All terrain karts (ATKs) are also part of the new Playground mode in “Fortnite.” ATKs were first introduced by Epic when the v5.0 patch went live earlier this month. ATKs are basically like golf carts with added drifting and boosting capabilities. Roofs of ATKs also doubles as a bounce pad. The addition of ATK could encourage players to built more creative race tracks in Playground mode. This could also give players the chance to practice driving ATKs and come up with new strategies.

Epic Games is also teasing that the new Playground mode will have “lots more loot.” The developer didn’t give out any information on what that exactly means, but it sounds like another much needed improvement from the original version of Playground mode. The previous version of the mode did offer a lot of resources for building, but it was very easy to run out of ammo and shields. It was also difficult to find specific guns. Perhaps the new version of Playground mode will fix that by simply offering up more Loot Llamas in the map.

Patch v5.10 is scheduled to go live later today and Epic Games has already shared the update's patch notes. In addition to the return of Playground mode in “Fortnite,” patch v5.10 will also introduce a new epic/legendary P90 SMG and a buff for the Slurp Juice healing item. Slurp Juice in patch v5.10 will heal players at the rate of two points per second and will prioritize the player’s health first instead of the shield. Slurp Juices will fill up 75 hit points and will only start generating shields once it’s done generating the player’s health, according to IGN.