Epic's standalone survival crafting game got its first update on Tuesday, smoothing out some of the new game's rough edges and adding a flurry of quality of life improvements.

We have covered Lego Fortnite since the title launched last month, when the game brought in 2.4 million simultaneous players. On its surface, the game is a Lego-ification of Minecraft, but beneath this surface lies the actual blending together of a few well-loved gameplay loops that players who loved cozy titles like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Valheim will find themselves right at home with.

A little over a month since its launch, Lego Fortnite's content was starting to run a little dry for players who dived in headlong in December (present company included). Alas, the game's first big update doesn't add the massive swath of new content that some players were hoping for, but it does improve things across the board, fixing a lot of little problems and quality of life complaints that the game's early adopters were running into.

Hi Builders!

v28.10 is here with brand new features and a brickload of bug fixes!

???? New Launch Pad toy to bounce around
???? Village and building improvements
???? Quality-of-life changes
✨ More LEGO Styles

Read all about the new additions to LEGO Fortnite at…

First off, Lego Fortnite is making it easier to get around the map with the addition of launch pads, a predictable item for longtime Fortnite players but a welcome one nonetheless. The launch pads should make giant ugly staircases a relic of the past while alleviating some of the pain of traversing the game's massive procedurally generated maps without proper vehicles or steering wheels.

New Launch Pad takes off on a new adventure! ????

pro tip: unlock the recipe by crafting a Copper Bar.

Our latest update here: https://t.co/p28TYzZD49 pic.twitter.com/fzquiEGRVj

Building-oriented players also get some tweaks to help things run a bit more smoothly. Builds will now automatically clear out flora in the surrounding area and fit a bit better onto slopes, since totally flat ground is relatively hard to come by. New floor, wall and roof options have also been added, including smaller pieces intended to make building a lot less awkward for anyone getting fancy.

Epic also is adding more Lego styled skins into the game (Ahsoka Tano, Spider-Man, etc) and a a trio of new villagers (Bushranger, Rustler, and Tomatohead). Villagers will also be able to open doors, which is actually a considerable improvement considering how many times they get stuck beyond the castle gates and can't get back to the oven for their late night gig baking pumpkin pies.

The full list of fixes is pretty long so if you’ve been waiting for it it’s well worth reading through the whole thing. Some big bugs should be squashed now, including the one where players spawned in the world stuck under a building (we never saw this one but the Lego Fortnite Reddit was certainly aware of it).

Beyond the specific bug fixes, improvements to stability, performance and the in-game physics should improve matters for ambitious players who bounced off of the game out of frustration (shoutout to my server-mate building us a monorail!). Hopefully the cumulative effect of these changes results in a smoother experience, because the game did seem to be catching and lagging quite a bit for some players, even on high-end hardware.

There's much in here, but the patch does not quite stop short of alleviating some of the core complaints from the game's very enthusiastic early player base. Servers remain capped at 15 villagers in total-a hard cap that really does discourage expansion and big multiplayer builds. There is no new biome yet so fully fresh content in short supply, but it makes sense for Epic to hammer in the basics before adding on new areas to explore. It's also unclear from the notes whether the fixes will address the "high complexity area" errors a lot of players have been seeing sometimes even on modest builds, but hope so. The game is a blast so far and we’re looking forward to getting back to building that pizza oven and open-air frost biome cafe. It’s also been nice to ignore the siren song of battle royale in favor of Lego Fortnite’s cute gameplay and peaceful pace, which at its best conjures the magic of Animal Crossing New Horizons.

It turns out that the game's fuzzy feelings are sort of a key to Epic's actually pretty lofty ambitions with the title: it joins Fortnite's traditional battle royale modes, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival, as standalone games available in the Fortnite ecosystem. And that ecosystem is the name of the game, and Epic is working to build out some alternative tentpole experiences that might appeal to players who aren't really fight-to-the-death types.

Today, getting Fortnite drops players into a virtual storefront loaded with free playable experiences. Some of those experienced are made by Epic itself, like Lego Fortnite, but most are "user-made" with Epic's powerful game development toolkit. While many games within the game are made by budding amateur game designers, others are branded experiences, like recent survival games from YouTube megastar MrBeast.

To grow Fortnite's appeal, Epic needs to cast a wider net, bringing in players far beyond those who revel in creeping around a cartoon map with a sniper rifle, dressed as Darth Vader. So far, Lego Fortnite is Fortnite's most compelling alternative offering — and a game that's likely to build more momentum as the updates keep rolling in.