Reviewing The Three Fortnite Games Epic Doesn't Want You To Play Anymore

Welcome back to Remastered! This week, I’m writing about some games available within Fortnite that are soon going to be gone forever. Additionally, I share a lot of thoughts on what I’ve been playing over the last week, which includes a preview build of the upcoming retro-inspired indie Dark Scrolls, and write about one of my favorite 3DS games to celebrate the system's 15th anniversary. Consider subscribing for free if you aren't already and enjoy! 

A Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage Retrospective

The video game industry has a shockingly long history of games that are no longer playable. Many of these were online games, as I outlined in my recent newsletter about Highguard, but they were almost all at least individual products sold on physical and digital store shelves. Now, even the smaller parts of a greater whole can succumb to this unplayable fate. On March 24, Epic Games announced that it was laying off over 1000 developers; at the same time, it announced the end of support and eventual delisting of Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage games within Fortnite.

Yes, Fortnite is best known as a battle royale, but in actuality, Epic Games wants Fortnite to be a platform of its own. That’s why players can create their own content with the UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) and share it within Fortnite itself, and why Epic created entire other games within the launcher to soak up players’ time and attention. Some of these, like Fortnite Festival proper and Lego Fortnite, remain successful, supported, and playable for now, but Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage aren’t as lucky. 

Fortnite may not be a retro game by any means, but for posterity's sake, I think the role served by these imminently ending modes in the history of live service games is worth noting and reflecting on. And it’s a chilling reflection; if the smaller parts of a successful game can’t succeed, then no individual game, studio, or user creation within a game is safe

Rocket Racing (Delisting in October 2026)

Rocket Racing’s closure feels like the most notable one because this was one of the flagship modes promoted by Epic when it began pushing Fortnite’s multi-game structure in December 2023. It was created by developers who worked on Rocket League (Epic owns Rocket League developer Psyonix), but operated as more of a traditional racing game all about drifting, boosting, and defying gravity on walls and ceilings.

I love a good racing game, so this was my favorite non-battle royale game within Fortnite. Epic absolutely nailed the game feel, as drifting felt incredibly natural, and its emphasis on boosting around made Rocket Racing reach speeds few racing games do. Its quests and rewards were also closely intertwined with the rest of Fortnite, so it was a very refreshing way to level up and progress a bit while playing a completely different kind of game. It was Fortnite’s best example of why it didn’t have to be just a platform for action or survival games.

In retrospect, its distinctiveness may have been part of its downfall. While unlocked car cosmetics could be carried over into the battle royale mode, they don’t mesh as well with the character-focused outfits that serve as Fortnite’s greatest V-Bucks generators. Support for this game became fairly scarce within a year of its release, and nowadays it fluctuates anywhere between 400 and 1,000 active players at any given moment. Those numbers aren’t terrible for a two-year-old racing game, but they are small beans within Fortnite.

It’s a shame that Rocket Racing is not only going away, but that all UEFN islands created with its template will be removed as well. While this game could have lived on through the community, it’ll essentially be as if it never existed within come October. I’m used to racing games being delisted because of expired licensing deals, but this one in particular feels like a gut-punch. Epic Games is leaving behind a great racing game with a still-active community. 

Ballistic (Delisting on April 16)

It can be tough to recall nowadays, but Fortnite Battle Royale only came to exist because Epic decided to create a clone of PUBG within its struggling co-op survival game. Epic was possibly hoping to recapture some of that original magic with Ballistic, a first-person 5v5 tactical shooter inspired by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Valorant. One team tries to plant and activate a Rift Point Device, while another defends and tries to defuse that Rift Point Device or wipe out the other team. Rinse and repeat in a best-of-seven-rounds format, buying the weapons you’ll use in between rounds, and you have a familiar shooter formula within Fortnite.

While there’s some IP novelty that comes from playing a game like Counter-Strike as Dustin Henderson from Stranger Things, it does not distinguish itself from Counter-Strike or Valorant in any meaningful way. I’m already not the biggest fan of these kinds of tactical shooters, and Ballistic probably wouldn’t be my first choice if I did want to play one. Still, it attracts a respectable community of players. I consistently see a couple thousand people playing Ballistic at any time, which is more than failed shooters like Highguard, Concord, and Spectre Divide at the end of their lifecycles. 

Ultimately, I am a bit confused as to why Epic Games would get rid of Ballistic, but after laying off 1,000 developers, games like this are bound to get caught in the crossfire. At least first-person shooter creation tools will remain in UEFN, and first-person Islands will remain, although Rocket Racing’s fate shows that Epic Games can change its mind on that at any time. 

Festival Battle Stage (Delisting on April 16)

Finally, we have the Festival Battle Stage, which is more of a sub-mode within the heavily monetized Fortnite Festival. It’s essentially an endurance-based competitive version of Fortnite Festival, where players have to earn points and sabotage each other while rhythm-gaming through a setlist of four songs. It’s the least original of the three games going away, as its gameplay is basically identical to Fortnite Festival.

I’m already a bit of a Fortnite Festival hater, as I think its gameplay is slower and more boring than classics like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Festival Battle Stage slows down the mode even more, as playing through four songs in a row drags on, and it never visually gives you the best feel for how you’re impacting the players you attack. Of the three modes going away, this is the only one I’d say felt like a dud.

Still, even though I don’t like it, I don’t wish for its delisting or for its developers to be out of work. This whole situation feels like Epic is taking a sledgehammer to a gold statue because it’s a little less shiny than usual. Good or bad, developers spent years creating and supporting these games within Fortnite, likely hoping their work would be safe within one of the industry’s most successful titles.

Now, they face a fate almost worse than death: completely vanishing and being forgotten about within a game that millions of people will continue to play. When, for preservation’s sake, the games within Fortnite aren’t even safe, and over 1000 developers working on Fortnite can’t find stable work, something is seriously wrong. 

What's Old Is News

Evercade, Windswept, and more

• Evercade, the company behind a wealth of gaming devices that make it easier to play retro games without the original hardware, is teasing something called Evercade Nexus.
• Square Enix is adding an AI chatbot to Dragon Quest X in Japan. Now I’m glad that game never ended up releasing in North America. 
• Battlefield Hardline will be delisted from PS4 and Xbox One storefronts on May 22, and its servers will go offline on June 22.

While it was a relatively light week for retro gaming news, I’ve been playing a lot of great games this past week:

• Windswept: Many platformers have tried to emulate the style of the Donkey Kong Country games, but no one outside of Rare and Retro Studios has done it as amazingly as WeatherFell with its new game, Windswept. This short but sweet adventure, starring a duck and turtle duo, understands that there is a fluidity to the weightiness of Donkey Kong Country’s platforming. With creative level design and boss encounters sprinkled throughout the game as well, I sprinted through playing Windswept in just a matter of days. Retroactively, this is one of my favorite games of 2025.
• Dark Scrolls: Announced last week by Doinksoft and Devolver Digital, I went hands-on with a preview build of this auto-scrolling, combat-driven platformer. While I’m a big fan of Doinksoft’s Demon Throttle, this one’s not really resonating with me. While I appreciate its roguelike structure and Ghosts & Goblins-like set-up, which sees players seamlessly making their way through tough platforming and combat challenges from area to area, it’s a little too simple otherwise. Built for multiplayer, the lack of movement and attack options just makes Dark Scrolls a little boring to play solo.
• Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor: I was a massive Thomas & Friends fan for most of my childhood, so this is a game I would’ve gone absolutely crazy for had I had it as a kid. It’s basically a simple train simulator that recreates several iconic Thomas stories in playable form. Its kids’ game simplicity meant I felt like I had seen everything the game had to offer pretty quickly, but I’m happy for the kids who are Thomas & Friends fans like I was, who can experience this game as a fundamental childhood classic.
• Screamer: Milstone radically reimagined a retro racing game into an anime-infused arcadey racer. In all honesty, there isn’t a ton of connective tissue for fans of the original, but it’s a stylish and enjoyable racer in its own right. 

The Games We Played

Fire Emblem Awakening

Tomorrow, we’ll celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Nintendo 3DS. That handheld is one of my favorite gaming devices of all time. It’s the last of its kind as a console with multiple gimmicks (dual screen functionality and 3D), yet it still packed in tons of fantastic games. Not including all of the Pokémon games I played on it, my favorite 3DS game was Fire Emblem Awakening.

I became a fan of Fire Emblem after borrowing Shadow Dragon from a friend in elementary school. I had no idea it was a struggling franchise, or that Awakening was a make-or-break game for the franchise’s future. I just knew I enjoyed Shadow Dragon and picked it up. While its gameplay is simpler than other games in the series, it was perfect for 13-year-old me and provided tactical gameplay and a fantasy world I couldn’t get enough of.

I still think Awakening features some of the best character designs of any Nintendo game, and its shorter length and simplicity give it immense replay value. Whenever I boot up my 3DS, it’s a reliable game I know I’ll always have a good time with. Awakening cemented me as a lifelong fan of the Fire Emblem series, and now I'm just itching to learn more about Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave for Nintendo Switch 2. 

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