In 2007, Alec Meer (RPS at peace) played a promising RTS mod for Half-life 2. “It’s really fun to see the familiar in such a different and well-considered format,” he said. “But it is very, very early, with a lot of work ahead.”
And it was a lot of work – 13 years of that. But over the weekend, Lambda Wars was finally released, inviting players to explore the world of Half-life 2 from a new perspective (i.e., a top-down strategy).
Lambda Wars is a free standalone mod set in the HL2 universe and based on the 2010 Valve top-down shooter code, Alien Swarm. He sees players take on the mantle of Resistance Commander or Overlord Combine in singleplayer, co-op and multiplayer modes, and swaps the game’s first person battles for real-time strategy conflicts.
Launched over the weekend, version 1.0 features four new units – Heavy Rebels, Heavy Combines, Cran Synths and Mortar Synths – new buildings and lots of bug fixes and balance changes, which you can check in the patch notes.
In a post on Reddit, one of the modders mentions that the team has received some donations to make the mod over the years, but it is mainly a “free time” project for them: “We had discussions about how to find funding, but in the end we decided to keep it as a project of passion ”
“It was quite a journey and I hope it brings some joy to the players of Half-Life and RTS”, they add.
If you want to try Lambda Wars, you can download it for free on Steam right now.