Half-Life: Alyx Modding on OpenMods

Valve's VR Half-Life with the Hammer Alyx editor

Half-Life: Alyx (2020) is Valve's VR-only Half-Life entry. Within a year of release, Valve shipped Hammer Alyx, a VR-specific edition of the Source 2 Hammer level editor, and the community started producing custom maps and short campaigns.

The modding scene is smaller than HL2's by orders of magnitude (VR has a much smaller installed base), but the toolchain is more modern (Source 2 vs Source 1) and the early-2020s wave of custom Alyx campaigns produced multiple high-quality fan-made adventures.

The toolchain

• Hammer Alyx (Source 2): Valve's free VR level editor. Same Hammer lineage, Source 2 engine.
• Steam Workshop: primary distribution for custom maps.
• Alyx's addons/ directory: local addon installation.

What you'll find on OpenMods

HL:A mods live overwhelmingly on Steam Workshop. The catalogue is small. OpenMods catalogues whatever GitHub-published Alyx content exists, which is sparse.

Practical notes

• VR-only. You need a VR headset. There's no flat-screen mode (well, there are community flat-screen mods, see below).
• Workshop addons auto-install. Subscribe in-browser or in-game; loaded on next launch.
• Custom campaigns are the highlight. Several multi-hour fan-made Alyx campaigns exist on Workshop. The quality bar is high.
• A flat-screen mod exists. Community-built. Lets you play HL:A on a monitor without VR, but Valve doesn't support this and the experience is necessarily compromised.