It’s been six years since Epic Gamesfirst announced Fortnite, a free-to-play third-person action building game that pits a group of four gamers against a horde of invading monsters in a post-apocalyptic world.

There’s now an official paid Early Access launch on July 25 across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Mac. The game was featured at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference last week, and it will make another appearance at E3 in Los Angeles next week. Anyone can sign up to play early at www.fortnite.com.

The free-to-play version of the game will launch later, likely next year, but Epic is opening this giant sandbox to gamers who just can’t wait to play. No two games are ever the same, thanks to dynamic levels that allow players to build massive forts in between waves of attacking creatures that emerge from roaming storm clouds.

[VIDEO: Watch a new trailer about Fortnite at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NylPGoNlGvc ]

While the game has been designed for digital play, Epic has partnered with Gearbox Publishing to release boxed retail versions for Xbox One and PS4.

Darren Sugg, creative director on Fortnite, talks about finally unleashing the new game after such a long development cycle in this exclusive interview.

  • How has Fortnite evolved over these multiple years?

We had a really cool idea and then every time we started building it, it got bigger and bigger. And we worked with the community and then they had ideas too, and we incorporated those ideas and kept making the game bigger and bigger and here we are.

How different is the game today from when you guys first had the idea at the internal Game Jam?

The overall game is fairly different, but the idea of a bunch of friends getting together and defending objectives has been the core of the game forever. It’s just we’ve bolted more and more things onto it over time.

  • What’s going on in this world?

In Fortnite 98 percent of the world’s population has disappeared and these terrible storms have ripped across the Earth releasing all of these creatures. A small band of heroes has been formed by the player to form a resistance against all these creatures and rescue the people who have been left behind. So they’re building a giant fortress to protect them and push back the storm.

  • What’s new that you’re showing at E3 this year?

There are all-new characters from what we’ve shown before. We now have the entire world shared among the players, so you get to save all your equipment and all your progression together. That means if I have a gun and I come into your world, I still have that gun. In the older days, it worked more like Minecraft where there was an owner for a particular game world and so like if you didn’t have progression in my world, you lost everything.

The other big feature we have now is the Outpost, which is a persistent building area where players get to bring resources and build their own giant fortress that will be saved in perpetuity. And they’ll continue to be able to grow their fortress and make themselves more powerful and more awesome.

  • How are you introducing new players to this game?

They’ll go through a short on-boarding tutorial that’s between 15 and 30 minutes and then you’ll be able to play with the rest of the population and all of the mission types. But there is a quest narrative that takes you through the entire front-end of the game, which is tens of hours. It will take you through the narration of learning about the tools and what happened to all of the people and introduce all the mission types.

  • Can you walk us through some of the new characters?

Ramirez is our new soldier character. She’s pretty much a badass range combatant. She’s all about using assault weapons and grenades and generally making things go boom.

Penny is the female constructor. She has her giant hammer and she’s all about building things and making existing bases tougher and more powerful.

Coming in part two: Multi-player details and much more