Blitz Royale launched as a time-limited Gamemode in Fortnite on the 18th of June 2025 and was only supposed to last till the 15th of July. Blitz however exceeded all expectations so that it was quickly extended for another month before it turned into a permanent Gamemode.
But what actually is Blitz Royale? Well, I am so glad you asked.
Blitz Royale is a small scale Battle Royale mode for 32 players on a comparatively really small map. The map consists of about half the size of a Fortnite Reload map. This was very apparent since Blitz during the first 2 months used a small scale version of Venture (the first Reload map).
In contrast to regular Reload there are no respawns available in Blitz and matches can be played in Solo, Duos, Squads and Six player teams. All matches however are being played in Zero Build. There are no Blitz lobbies with the building feature enabled. Apart from the regular matchmaking, which fills the lobbies with a lot of Bots, there are also specific non-Bot lobbies for Duos and 6 player teams. Interesting that players and content creators always heavily criticized the OG mode for having Bots, but I practically never saw the same criticism being ushered for Blitz Royale.
According to the Fortnite developers the Gamemode was designed primarily for mobile players, but it is accessible for players on all platforms regardless. So if the aim was to design a gamemode primarily for mobile players, than it is questionable if they actually succeeded with this, since it will be mostly Console and PC players dominating the lobbies.
The smaller scale of the maps and lack of respawns however gives Blitz a very fast pace. Matches on average take only around 5 mins, which is really the speedrun version of Battle Royale matches and pretty unheard of in the genre. I really have to give Fortnite credit for this. The idea seems so logical that it is odd, that no one else has done it before. There are smaller round-based Battle Royale games, but there are no other 5 mins BR games for 30+ players out there. I will personally always prefer longer (“real”) Battle Royale matches and Youtube videos over Blitz and Youtube Shorts/Tiktok videos, but there is clearly a huge market for that.
Blitz Royale tries to keep things fresh via weekly variants. Every week users play with a different weaponpool or starting weapons and since Week 7 map changes are also possible. Week 2 for example was based on Avatar abilities, while week 4 brought the Ninja Turtles weapons back. Week 7 gave us the return of Mega City, while during week 9 players were fighting in the Oathbound Citadel. It will be interesting to see how long they will be able to keep the weekly rotations fresh and exciting before they inevitably will have to recycle content at some point.
Another important aspect of Blitz Royale are the Blitz levels. Around every minute players get additional rewards during the matches. Blitz Level 2 for example gives players an additional Boon (which grants players bonus effects) and on Level 3 and 4 they get random golden and mythic weapons for free. This removes the need to lot after the first minute or two.
So far Epic Games has clearly succeeded with this gamemode. During its first couple of weeks Blitz Royale had more players than even the main Battle Royale Gamemode. I don’t think this has ever happened in Fortnite history and at that point it was already obvious to me, that they would simply have to make the gamemode permanent. Blitz launched with more than 400.000 players in June and reached a peak of over 530.000 players in early August. Obviously they couldn’t hold that kind of numbers, but Blitz still manages to average around 100.000 players in September, which still makes it the most played gamemode outside of the main Battle Royale mode. It would have been insane to remove Blitz, while Party Royale or Legends Landing stay in the game.
Result:
No matter how you look at it, Blitz Royale has been a major success for Fortnite. While I will personally always prefer the bigger Battle Royale format (especially the OG mode), it’s really nice that the option is there to play a very fast paced alternative as well. Blitz Royale is therefore for me like the perfect appetizer before the main dinner. While it will never manage to outshine the following dishes, it’s always nice to start your meal on a positive note.
It’s also interesting to see, that all the more classic third-person shooter modes in Fortnite, like Battle Royale, OG, Reload and Blitz have far more players than Lego Fortnite, Festival or Rocket Racing. Maybe this could be an indicator that Epic Games should focus on what they can do best instead of trying to represent every videogame genre within one game.
7.5/10
