Fortnite Sidekicks are NPC companions that accompany players during gameplay. Compared to other NPC types, Sidekicks have a unique set of emotes, customizable appearances, and scriptable behaviors. You can even bring a player’s custom Sidekick into your game — personalizing the player’s experience.
Using Sidekicks, you can build a wide array of game types: monster battlers, farming sims, creature-collection RPGs, and more. With over 30 Sidekicks to choose from, there's a companion for every game.
For a complete list of available Sidekicks, see Creating a Sidekick.
Default Sidekick Emotes
Each Sidekick has a unique set of animated emotes, making them the perfect interactive companions. For example, Sidekicks who help players solve puzzles can become happy upon success. And Sidekicks who assist players in combat can become worried when a player is injured.
Below, you can see the animations for happy and worried on the Sidekick Scales.
Happy. | Worried. |
Emotes such as eat and sleep are useful for game loops in pet care sims, survival RPGs, and more. The action and react emotes (attack and stagger animations) are useful for combat-focused gameplay.
Below, you can see Scale’s animations for action and react.
Action. | React. |
Each Sidekick also has a unique emote that shows off its personality.
For a complete list of Sidekick behaviors, see NPC Types.
Customizing Your Sidekick
While you can’t build a Sidekick from scratch, you can customize its appearance, outfits, behaviors, animations, and name.
Sidekicks from IPs cannot be customized.
Appearance
You can take full control over a Sidekick’s colors, scale, outfits, and quirks using UEFN modifiers. Quirks are small variations of a Sidekick’s mesh (such as a floppy ear) that make them unique.
For a deep dive into Sidekick cosmetic customization, see Creating a Sidekick.
Behaviors and Reactions
Custom Sidekick behaviors can be created through Verse using SceneGraph and the Sidekick API. By using animations from a Sidekick’s default emotes, you can create new behaviors such as fetching items, moving to a target, attacking, or following a player. These behaviors are useful for building companion quests, delivery sims, protecting payloads, and more.
Gameplay Stats
By using Verse or UEFN modifiers, you can customize your Sidekick’s stats — including their health, shield, and whether they take damage. Changing how your Sidekick interacts with damage can fine tune the difficulty of your gameplay.
Only certain Fortnite weapons and items can damage, push back, or otherwise affect Sidekicks. For a complete list of items that affect Sidekicks and how to customize stats, see Damaging Your Sidekick.
Implementing Sidekicks
Like other NPCs, Sidekicks are available through the NPC Spawner device by using a Custom character definition.
For more information on using NPC spawner devices, see NPC Spawner Devices.
Cosmetic Sync
With Cosmetic Sync, you can add an NPC that transforms into a player's equipped Sidekick (including licensed Sidekicks). This means a Sidekick you’ve created takes the form of the Sidekick the player owns. Sidekicks can be swapped at any point during gameplay, giving you a way to design games where your player’s companion becomes part of the experience.
Cosmetic Sync disables persona behavior on NPCs.
