Fortnite's April Fools Update Brings Big Heads, Finger Guns, and Rideable Llamas

For exactly 24 hours, Fortnite became a different game. Epic Games dropped v40.10 on April 1 at 5:30 AM ET, and by April 2 at 5:30 AM ET, the April Fools mode had quietly switched off, taking its rideable llamas and weaponized finger gestures with it.

The headlining feature was Big Heads, a throwback to the cheat-code era of late-90s and early-2000s console gaming that made every player's head cartoonishly oversized. Alongside that, Finger Guns turned hand gestures into actual weapons, letting players deal damage by literally pointing their fingers at opponents. Shoulder Riding let one player climb onto another's back, with stacking possible, meaning a squad could theoretically form a human tower. Leaker HYPEX posted footage of multiple players stacked on a single teammate's shoulders, and data miner FortTory confirmed the stacking extended to llama riding, which put a mobile stack of players on the back of one of the island's iconic supply-drop llamas. Fall damage was pulled entirely from all affected modes and replaced with a cartoony splat sound that dealt zero health penalty.

All five features ran in unranked Battle Royale and Blitz. Unranked Reload got four of the five; Big Heads was the one feature excluded from that playlist. Ranked and competitive modes were left completely untouched, which meant no ladder implications for players grinding placement.

If you missed the window entirely, that content is gone and Epic has no history of keeping April Fools gag mechanics in the live build after the event closes. What does remain in v40.10 are the non-time-limited balance changes: the shotgun reloader received adjustments, the Twin Mag SMG got spread tweaks, and the UI now includes English Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text options, which are permanent accessibility improvements for all platforms including mobile and cloud.

The question of whether to log in now comes down to those persistent changes. The shotgun reloader and Twin Mag SMG adjustments affect core weapon feel in every match going forward, so any player who leans on either weapon in their loadout should get a few games in to recalibrate aim and pacing. The Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text additions are opt-in under communication settings and do not require reverting after the April Fools window; they stay wherever you leave them.

The April Fools mode itself left no cosmetic rewards, no XP bonuses, and no quest completions tied to it. Competitive rankings were never at stake. What v40.10 delivered in those 24 hours was pure spectacle, the kind that generates the clips and community videos that fill feeds for days after the event closes, even when the mode no longer exists in the game that inspired them.