While Halloween is drawing nearer, the clock is ticking before Epic Games reveals this year’s Fortnitemares event, which will carry Fortnite through spooky season with haunting new skins, bosses, weapons, and points of interest on the map. Until that drops, though, there is another way to get your Fortnitemares fix if you happen to be visiting Universal Studios in Orlando or Hollywood.
This year’s Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) event has continued the recent trend of gaming properties having a major presence. The past few years have seen The Last of Us, Fallout, and Five Nights at Freddy’s brought to life, thanks in no small part to the popularity of the live-action adaptations of each. This year, Fortnite takes center stage with Fortnitemares scare zones based on the annual celebration of all things horror taking place on both coasts, with each park getting a unique take on the event.
To adapt Fortnitemares, creative teams at both Universal parks worked with Epic Games to craft an experience that feels genuine to the experience of traversing a Fortnite island. Speaking to GameSpot, Universal Studios Orlando creative development show director Ramón Paradoa set the stage. Guests are dropped into the middle of Freaky Fields, a Fortnitemares location from the past two years (Chapter 5, Season 4 and Chapter 6, Season 4) during a battle royale round.
“You’ve got pumpkins. You’ve got scarecrows. You’ve got cornfields. You’ve got barns. You’ve got a bunch of creepy jack-o’-lanterns with glowing faces. A lot of things that you expect and feel like Halloween comfort food,” he explained. “But how do we take it further?”
Fortnitemares at Halloween Horror Nights
That’s the process Paradoa refers to as “HHNifying” the property, going beyond adapting the aesthetics and finding a way to make it immersive. In Orlando, that starts as you enter the zone and are faced with a version of a character-select screen, with Skull Trooper Jonesy as the chosen skin. Your mission is to survive Freaky Fields to get to the Halloween Horror Nights POI on the other side, where you’re greeted by the Battle Bus and the makings of a spooky party. (While normally you would start your match on the Battle Bus, having it present at the end of the scare zone makes sense, given the extraction endgame introduced last season.) Along the way, you’ll cross paths with popular Fortnite skins and even some deeper-cut NPCs.
“What we landed on in partnership with Epic Games was bringing the Shadows to life,” Paradoa said. “If you remember the Shadow characters that were kind of derivative of the Shadow Midas character from a few years ago, [we’re] bringing those characters in as monsters that are traversing through this space, in addition to Husks. And I think people who go way back with Fortnite and Epic Games lore, no one loved those Husks.”
Shadows first arrived in the Fortnitemares 2020 event as a monster players would become after being eliminated in a match. Husks, on the other hand, come from Fortnite: Save the World and are still tormenting those playing the game’s original mode. In the scare zone, both of the monsters–as well as the skinned “players”–are costumed characters moving freely throughout the zone, doing whatever they can to torment guests passing through. Well, most of them are, anyway.
“Skeleterra is there to interact with the guests in a variety of different ways but also to perform a select number of emotes that she can perform while you take pictures and videos with her,” Paradoa teases.
Sadly, when visiting the zone ourselves, Skeleterra was nowhere to be found. Of course, that didn’t stop guests from emoting for photos and videos in any of the several spots that looked practically built to be TikTok video backdrops, including one that featured a dramatically posed Curdle Scream Leader. We also missed out on seeing any of the non-Fortnite characters Paradoa confirms will pop up in the maze, though their inclusion makes sense. Previous Fortnitemares events have included skins of The Grabber (Black Phone), Michael Myers (Halloween), Billy the Puppet (Saw), and Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th), all Horror Nights legends in their own right.
It’s not just walk-around characters and set dressing bringing Fortnitemares to life at HHN, though. According to Paradoa, this space includes the most extensive use of technology they’ve ever put to work in a scare zone, including an attempt at recreating the experience of being caught in the storm.
“It is one of the coolest things I think we have ever done in Halloween Horror Nights before,” he said. “[It’s] so immersive in so many different ways, and when it happens, no matter where you are in the scare zone, you feel it. You feel the consequences of the storm rolling in, and the characters are also reacting and reacting to the storm rolling in as well.”
Visually, it is certainly the best aspect of the zone. LED lighting has been placed throughout the trees, along with massive purple floodlights and smoke machines, all timed to the circle closing in on you as you progress through the zone. Before you know it, you’re bathed in light, with LED strips approximating the jolts of electricity surrounding you and the smoke emulating the smoke that rises from your character while they’re losing health in the storm. It’s a fun technical trick, though being on a loop that resets fairly often takes away from the experience a bit if you linger to check out Hollowhead battling Skull Trooper.
Beyond the storm, the most impressive technical element of the Fortnitemares zone is that Universal created a short scene that uses projection mapping to simulate Wrath building structures to reach an enemy that looks a lot like Jack Gourdon. Once he reaches him, Gourdon’s time is up as he gets blown to pieces. It might only be a quick moment, but it’s a fun one.
Check out this awesome moment in the Fortnitemares scare zone at Halloween Horror Nights! Wrath enters a building then faces off with their enemy! Will they come out on top? Watch to find out! #HHN35 #HHN pic.twitter.com/sMfTELIzHQ
— HHNSpeculationMatt (@SpeculationMatt) August 28, 2026
What both the storm and the building scene left me wondering was how good an actual Fortnitemares haunted house at the event could be. While scare zones are outdoors, recreating the settings in a sound stage where you can completely control the level of lighting and direct the guests toward specific scares would be exciting. Sound would also play a bigger role in a house, as being indoors would allow the audio elements like the storm alarm or eliminations to boom across the various rooms. In the scare zone, those details are lost due to it being outdoors and stuffed with guests all making their way to the Battle Bus. Were there a way to combine a house and zone, the team could likely craft an even more memorable and fleshed out rendition of Fortnitemares.
As it stands, though, Fortnitemares at Universal Studios Orlando was a blast for this longtime Fortnite fan. Seeing skins I play alongside regularly in the real world while venturing toward a Battle Bus was a surreal experience and one I would gladly do again. And with Fortnitemares bringing new elements to Fortnite each year, hopefully this isn’t the last time Universal attempts to adapt it.
Halloween Horror Nights is open now at Universal Studios Orlando, while Hollywood’s Horror Nights begins September 3. The event runs through November 1 on both coasts and features haunted houses based on the movies Sinners, Hellraiser, and Evil Dead Burn, as well as the music of Ozzy Osbourne, the final season of Stranger Things, and more.
Image credit: Universal Orlando Resort
