While Dark and Darker is caught in a legal battle, a player is bringing the game to Fortnite

While Dark and Darker is still in legal limbo, a sole creator is working on bringing the popular fantasy RPG to a new platform: Fortnite.

This sole developer comes from Fern, a UK-based software engineer who posted a video of their work-in-process project to the Fortnite Creative Reddit. Caught up in the recent tech industry layoffs, they decided to "chill for a bit" and work on personal projects. Thus, the Dark and Darker map.

"The project started back when UEFN didn't even exist. I believe I started with this idea in Jan 2023. I'd been updating myself on Unreal Engine 5 as I'd done multiple projects with Unreal Engine 4 and wanted to be on the latest version to use nanite, lumen and all the great tech from Epic."

"On March 22, Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) was released and I thought it was the best, fastest way to get this project in everyone's hands and play with my friends. Using Fortnite's foundation, which, if you think about it it has a lot of the mechanics Dark and Darker uses, like chests, closing storms, etc."

Originally intended as a fun thing for Fern and their friends to mess around with, Fern goes on to state they've been working on the Dark and Darker Fortnite Island "non-stop every day for about 6 hours". Using their own personal experiences with the RPG and YouTube videos, Fern has been working to nail the Crypt 2 map and get it as accurate as possible. They've even gone as far as to use the same Unreal Engine store assets used in Dark and Darker.

Fern hopes the map will be out there and playable by other Fortnite players during the second half of April, as they are currently sitting by and waiting to be approved by Epic's creator program. Until then, they're continuing to chip away at the tribute map. While this was in the works before the current legal battle between Nexon and Ironmace, they hope it provides a "breath of fresh air" for those eager to play the ironmace RPG.

"I really wanted to show this to the community as it seems that we're not gonna have a playtest any time soon, and wanted to give the community a "breath of fresh air". That's the only part it played in this. People love the drama and are making jokes about Nexon coming for me already, but they're nothing but jokes, Nexon cannot copyright a genre or how you place a few assets around inside Fortnite."

Not only is this yet another wild example of the creativity of the gaming community, it's also one of numerous excellent projects that have sprung up with the introduction of the Unreal Engine editor in Fortnite. At a time where player creations in this growing metaverse space are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the AAA games industry, maybe the next wave of exceptional new games will explode from there.

If you want to keep up with what's going on with Fortnite right now - you can check out the latest Attack on Titan x Fortnite update coming to the game soon!