Half-Life: Alyx is amazing, but once you’ve seen the story through, there’s little else to do other than to play it through again. The Half-Life: Alyx XenThug Horde Mode mod changes that.
This new mod, released over the weekend by fan developer Manello, includes a full, wave-based Horde Mode for Alyx. Horde Modes, which serves as the basis for many full VR games, see players fending off wave after wave of incoming attackers, trying to stay alive for as long as possible. This mod has players doing just that, facing off with Alyx’s range of gruesome bad guys. Check it out in our gameplay footage below.
As you fight, you’ll earn money (resin) that you can use to stock up on ammo between waves. You’ll be fighting for a high score or, in other words, bragging rights with your friends.
XenThug is a little buggy right now, but it’s also a chaotic bit of fun, unleashing Alyx’s robust physics systems from the sensible restraints of Valve’s design. Though it starts off quite easy, a few rounds in you’ll have headcrabs flinging themselves at you in all directions, getting trapped under tables and cars. Suffice to say if you found Alyx to be a scary experience, the same goes here.
Plus there’s some great easter eggs and hidden features. You’ll be able to spend more than a fleeting few seconds holding a certain crowbar, for example, and there’s a locked room holding more valuables if you can find the security key.
This is one of the first full mods we’ve seen for Alyx since its release just under a month ago, suggesting that the game has a long life ahead of it for this scene.
XenThug is available to download for free, with instructions on how to do all that right here. Better yet, its Github release means that any that wants to add new maps to the mode can do just that.
Update: Now that Valve have released the official modding tools for Half-Life: Alyx, XenThug is available to easily download and install on the Steam Workshop.
