Fortnite Party Royale is the most fun you can have in the metaverse

The in-game party where you can listen to DJs, do cartoonish challenges or hurl burgers while dressed as a banana is a mass-participation godsend

My son is dressed as a giant banana and he is throwing hamburgers at me. I am making my getaway on a solid gold quad bike. For once, neither of us has access to automatic weapons.

No, our home schooling regime hasn't taken a dark turn. This is Party Royale, the brand new Fortnite mode, where deadly violence is banned and where the emphasis is on messing about and engaging in non-lethal competitions - but mostly messing about. It's only been live for a few days but already it feels like what the early-millennium online social experiment Second Life could have been if it had been built by game designers rather than Californian internet eggheads.