Garry’s Mod: What’s Behind One of the Biggest Sandboxes

This year Garry’s Mod is turning 15. Its latest version, Garry’s Mod 13, has over 1,000,000 user-created modifications, meaning it’s one of the largest modding societies. From this jubilee Garry’s Mod review by IndieGames.Download, you will learn all the most exciting and impressive facts about this colossal indie franchise.

The Big G

Garry is the actual author of the title, Garry Newman. His main business was a dating site that brought revenues that were enough to cover development expenses. Anyway, it was generally for fun, so Newman was incredibly surprised when Valve offered him to sell it and sold over 10 million copies.

He developed early versions of GM as an addon for Valve’s Half-Life 2. It allowed us to use physical objects, locations, and NPCs to make small games. In 2006, its popularity let Facepunch Studios start distributing Garry’s Mod as a standalone game. It’s still powered by the Source engine and Havok for physics, but you don’t have to purchase any of Valve’s games to play it anymore. You can import any models and maps into the game and manage scripts using elementary Lua scripting. It means that any action and scenario that comes into your head is implementable.

The Tools

There are just 3 instruments that rule the entire process. The Physics Gun is for placing, freezing, and rotating of objects; with the Tool Gun, you can create, resize, delete, and fix graphic overlays. Finally, the Camera is for taking screenshots and recording videos. Combine it with scripts, and you will get a Source-powered movie! We love them at IndieGames.Download because they’re wickedly funny.

Some actions are not obvious. For example, there’s an option to merge things together, which means that you can turn toilets into vehicles, or, let’s say, build a castle using dragons instead of bricks. It’s so absurd but extremely addictive.

Modes of the Mod

To start from scratch, you’re not required to create gameplay modes from the ground up. There are over 20 default modes that include sandbox for experiments with the engine, jailbreak, racing, stealth assassin, building in space, zombie apocalypse with AI-driven bots, real-life simulation, RPG, parkour, faction wars, and more. By modifying these presents, you can create full-featured levels and share them with the Steam Workshop community.

There are no limitations for your imagination to make shooters, realistic simulators of anything, story-driven adventures, humoristic plays, or even invite your friends to a virtual cinema to watch YouTube or movies within the game together.

One more category of add-ons makes it possible to improve the core of Garry’s Mod. They include extra weapons, texture packs, realistic weather conditions, electronic systems, and even in-game Internet. With additional props (details), you can build complicated mechanisms and large-scale infrastructures that interact in real-time. It’s not that the default library is small, but it definitely lacks some essential objects for building realistic simulations. You will need a hi-end PC to make them all run smooth, but the result is worth it. The Orange Box engine that runs GM today and these add-ons let you make worlds with high-quality gameplay that looks authentic.

Neverending Story

A popular statement says, “Giving up playing Garry’s Mod dramatically improves the quality of life.” This saying illustrates how much time of your life this game may take. There’s no end to content, and Newman’s team continues to release numerous updates every quarter. Moreover, you can try to unlock over 30 related Steam achievements. It’s just impossible to face a shortage of insane experiences. IndieGames.Download strongly recommends it to everyone who lacks freedom of self-expression in video games.