Hide & Seek in UEFN: Build the Playground Classic

Everybody has played Hide & Seek. One person counts; everyone else scatters. In Fortnite Creative that childhood game becomes a tense, large-lobby chase: a Seeker (or a growing infected pack) hunts a crowd of Hiders scattered across a detailed map full of nooks. Hiders win by surviving until the timer runs out; the Seeker wins by finding everyone first. This Game Modes entry breaks the format down and builds a compile-verified Verse round manager that counts hiders, runs the clock, and calls the winner.

1. What it is

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Asymmetric Chase

Hide & Seek is an asymmetric chase / survival mode. At round start, one or more Seekers are chosen (often held in place during a countdown) while Hiders scatter and conceal themselves. Two clocks decide everything:

• The round timer — if it expires with hiders still alive, the Hiders win.
• The hider count — if the Seeker finds and tags every hider before time runs out, the Seeker wins.

The most popular Fortnite variant is infected-style: a tagged hider becomes a Seeker, so the hunt snowballs and the last survivor is the hero.

2. Type of game

3. The loop

Every round is a countdown squeeze: hiders scatter, the seeker hunts, and the round resolves on whichever clock finishes first — time or the hider count.

The tension is the dwindling clock against the dwindling hider list — whichever empties first decides the round.

4. Why it's fun

• Pure heart-pounding tension. Crouching in a closet while footsteps approach is a feeling no other mode delivers.
• The map is the toy. A great Hide & Seek map has hundreds of clever spots — discovery itself is half the fun.
• Snowball drama (infected). Watching the seeker pack grow while you're one of three survivors is genuinely thrilling.
• No aim required. It's all about positioning, timing, and nerve — totally accessible to casual players and kids.
• Endless replay. Same map, different hides every round; you never run out of spots to try.

5. Who made the great ones

Hide & Seek is one of Creative's most-played casual categories:

• fatal_creations — Fishy Mansion is the genre titan, with 65M+ players; an infected-style mode with 24 players and 300+ hiding spots across luxury beach mansions. The same creator's Mountain Mansion is famous for its sheer density of spots.
• Jxdvn — a Friday the 13th-inspired build where Jason is the seeker, proving how much a horror theme amplifies the dread.
• Color Hide and Seek creators bundle 8 distinct themed sub-maps into one island for variety.
• Seasonal hits like The Props that Stole Christmas (RICHIMPULSE) blend hide & seek with prop-hunt mechanics.

6. Examples / variants

• Classic survive-the-timer — one seeker, hiders win if anyone lives when the clock hits zero.
• Infected — every tagged hider joins the seekers; last survivor wins. The most popular Fortnite flavor.
• Prop-hide hybrid — hiders disguise as objects (see the Prop Hunt guide) for a deeper concealment layer.
• Themed horror — a single scary seeker, dark map, jump-scare pacing.

7. How to make it in UEFN / Verse

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Two-Clock Race

The devices you'll place

• Timer Device (timer_device) — this is the round clock. It fires SuccessEvent / FailureEvent when it ends, which is how Verse knows the hiders survived.
• Class Designer / Team Settings — define the Seeker and Hider classes (movement, visibility, weapons).
• Elimination Manager (elimination_manager_device) — fires EliminatedEvent when a hider is tagged/caught, so Verse can count them down.
• Player Spawn Pads + a big map full of hiding spots.

The Verse mechanic that ties it together

The clock and classes are device-driven. Verse owns the race between two clocks: when the timer ends, hiders win; when the last hider is tagged, the seeker wins. The series staple returns — subscribe to events, react — this time to both the Timer and the Elimination Manager.

# timer_device signals SuccessEvent : ?agent when the round clock runs out.
# elimination_manager_device signals EliminatedEvent : agent on each tag.
RoundTimer.SuccessEvent.Subscribe(OnTimeUp)
EliminationManager.EliminatedEvent.Subscribe(OnHiderTagged)

We seed the hider count from the lobby — the same call used all series long:

Players := GetPlayspace().GetPlayers()   # []player
HidersLeft := Players.Length - 1         # minus the seeker, set in StartRound

The full, compile-verified round manager

Drop this hide_and_seek_device into your project, wire the @editable Timer and Elimination Manager, and it runs the two-clock race: hiders win on the timer, the seeker wins on the last tag. It's a standalone creative_device, so it compiles on its own.

How it works, line by line

1. Two @editable references (Timer + Elimination Manager) let a designer drag the real devices in.
2. OnBegin subscribes to both the timer's SuccessEvent and the manager's EliminatedEvent, then starts the first round.
3. StartRound seeds HidersLeft from GetPlayspace().GetPlayers().Length minus the seekers, clamps to 0, and starts the clock with RoundTimer.Start().
4. OnHiderTagged decrements; hitting 0 means the seeker caught everyone → seeker win.
5. OnTimeUp fires from the timer's SuccessEvent. Its payload is ?agent (optional), so the handler signature takes ?agent. If hiders remain, they win.

Gotchas

• The timer payload is ?agent, not agent. timer_device.SuccessEvent is listenable(?agent), so your handler must accept ?agent or it won't compile.
• Two clocks, one race. Don't try to detect 'time left' manually — let the Timer device fire its event and let the count fire on tags; whichever lands first wins.
• Hold the seeker during the countdown. Hiders need a head start — gate seeker movement with the Timer's start or a separate countdown, or the round feels unfair.
• The map IS the mode. Hundreds of hiding spots, varied sightlines, and dead-ends are the craft — that's level design, not Verse.

Recap

• Hide & Seek is an asymmetric chase: seekers hunt, hiders survive, and two clocks (the timer and the hider count) decide the round.
• The fun is pure tension and discovery — the map full of clever spots is the toy.
• In UEFN the Timer device is the round clock; the Elimination Manager reports each tag; the Class Designer sets the roles.
• The Verse pattern is the series staple: subscribe to the Timer's SuccessEvent and the manager's EliminatedEvent, race the two clocks, and award whichever empties first.
• Watch the ?agent payload on the timer event — that's the one compile gotcha here.