Fortnite’s mysterious, giant cube continues to do weird things

Fortnite, for all its pop culture success, remains a deeply strange game. Take, for instance, the giant cube that has been rolling over the map and now resides on a small hill and is currently making players glow when they’re near it.

The gravity field near the cube has also been lessened recently, allowing you to jump higher and further when you’re close to it. It makes all sorts of strange, alien noises. Small rocks float around the cube, in a very peaceful manner. It fills up your shields.

Shooting it doesn’t do much, but if you can get on top of it it will bounce you a very long way straight up and you will die when you hit the ground. If you strike it from the side you will get blasted a pretty decent way. Players often seem to have a sort of collective bargain that everyone can look at the cube for a bit in peace, but after a while everyone gets bored and starts shooting each other again. Or at least that has been my experience.

Here is an idea of how the cube is moving:

Fans are keeping an obsessive watch over where the cube is, where it might be going, what it’s doing to players in-game and what it all means. At a time when the actual news is bleak, Epic Games continues to give us continually goofy puzzles and events that lead to lighthearted conspiracy theories, and I love them for it.

Epic Games via Polygon

The energy field around it that leads to the lowered gravity, in which you hear the strange noises, is even bigger. You can kinda see it in the screenshot below.

Epic Games via Polygon

When you break through the cube’s energy barrier, you begin to see runes float in your field of vision after a few seconds, but it also only lasts a few seconds. The cube is having some kind of effect on you while you’re close.

Epic Games via Polygon

You may ask yourself: Can I jump even higher if I use a Shockwave Grenade after the mysterious cube blasts me into the air? The answer, it turns out, is yes. We don’t recommend it.

Some players have given up on the idea that they can figure out what the cube is, and have instead begun to make friends with it. Who doesn’t love playing a nice game with the giant, mysterious purple cube?

In perhaps the most surprising twist, it turns out the cube was an Easter egg in the Marvel cinematic universe although, like Thanos, it seems to have changed color from its first introduction to its current state.

Marvel Studios/Disney

Having seen it move by rolling from one side to the other, I’m pretty convinced Epic Games has begun what is the most epic Gamecube-related meme-style troll of all time.

The cube is massive, it’s strange, and it continues to slowly change its behavior and do strange things with time. It’s probably not done moving. Players have gone through datamined game files, and some are convinced that it’s going to create a new lake on the map.

Personally, I just hope other competitive sports with big money prizes begin to incorporate magical items that unexpectedly change the behavior of players. Imagine if the NFL instituted a new “magical marble that makes players do backflips” rule, and you never knew when the marble would show up? I would watch that game forever.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on ... whatever this is.