Do you need a physical guitar for Fortnite Festival? -

It Works, but not great.

With the recent release of Fortnite Festival, many die-hard community members in the rhythm gaming genre have come over to Fortnite’s newest mode to take over leaderboards and enjoy Harmonix’s newest entry. Many Content Creator’s videos show users using a guitar peripheral inside Fortnite’s platform.

While it is possible to play Fortnite Festival with a guitar controller, it isn’t intended. Festival uses no strum mechanic that is a main feature to Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. You are essentially holding an incomplete controller that plays like a piano. Having to individually press buttons on screen when previously you could anchor fingers on specific buttons and strum for repetitive combo lines.

@iFireMonkey on a twitter post has shared the potential for future support with Guitar, Bass, and Pro Drum instrument controllers. PDPgaming is also tweeted announcing a new guitar controller January 2024. PDP previous created some Rock Band 4 Jaguar controllers for Harmonix’s Rock Band 4 game. With these 2 tweets, it’s safe to probably assume that Fortnite will have an official solution similar to the original games soon. If you’re tech savy, tinker with your current controllers, but don’t go out of your way to purchase and hook up a controller. @JparaLove tweeted a photo of the Riffmaster, the PDP guitar in question. Photos came about from a recent FCC filing. There is a noticeable Playstation button on it, which makes it seem like this controller will be for Rock Band 4

Current Limitations for Fortnite Festival

You can only use a guitar peripheral on PC and it has to be compatible with your PC. Any Guitar Hero/Rock Band controller will not work. I made a guide that shows what guitars you should buy if you want to play Clone Hero, and the Controllers may overlap with Fortnite Festival.

There is no lefty mode support. You will have to reverse your button order to authentically play in lefty mode.

You cannot use a strum bar. The game plays like a piano rhythm game. You tap keys. You can’t hold the same buttons for long note combo lines that repeat the same keys

No Drum Support. What I mean is that traditional play styles that would use a kick drum is not available in Fortnite Festival. All 4 instruments that the gamemode offers have been converted in 5 lane or 4 lane guitar style highways.

Fortnite Festival is still in its infancy at the time of this blog post. I hope that Harmonix and Epic Games implement features that further the game play to that of the original formula. We will have to see what PDP cooks up for a controller.