The Half-Life series has become notorious for seemingly unending development periods for much-anticipated games. The notorious Half-Life 3 has been a rumor for years, although last year's documentary The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx seems to have confirmed the end of the 2013-2014 cancelled Half-Life 3 project. But a Half-Life 2 inspired game has been in development for much longer. After 13 years, Half-Life Lambda Wars is finally out and is free to play on Steam.
Half-Life Lambda Wars actually began as mod for Half-Life 2 based off of Valve's 2010 top-down shooter, Alien Swarm. The goal in Alien Swarm is to clear waves of aliens to progress through levels. Alien Swarm contains some RPG elements like class choice, interchangeable equipment and weapons, and unlockables as players progress. The idea for Half-Life Lambda Wars was to re-create the feel of top-down shooter action in Alien Wars and incorporate it into battles from Half-Life 2.
Half-Life Lambda Wars has been in development since 2007, and the development team behind the game was constantly changing. One team member did say on Reddit that the "lead programmer started and finished the project." Half-Life Lambda Wars allows players to choose sides between the Resistance and the Combine and fight opposing forces in real-time strategy battles. The game features single-player missions and an offline AI skirmish mode as well as multiplayer for up to 8 players.
The launch of Half-Life Lambda Wars also brings with it Patch 1.0, which adds new content from the beta version of the game. The patch introduces four new units: Heavy Rebels, Heavy Combines, Cran Synths, and Mortar Synths, as well as bug fixes for the game. Although Half-Life 2 is played from a first-person perspective, Half-Life Lambda Wars is fully embracing the real-time strategy format with an RTS interface, fog of war, and separate unit and production building groups.
The story of Half-Life Lambda Wars is an uplifting one for any who follow community-made mods of their favorite games. These mods are often created as a passion projects by teams who receive little to no financial compensation for all the hard work put in. The release of Half-Life Lambda Wars is an achievement in and of itself, as other community-made mods never come out at all. The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim mod Skyblivion and its sister mod Skywind have been in development for years as well, though there is still no expected release date for either. Half-Life Lambda Wars is lucky, and fans of the Half-Life series might want to give the real-time strategy game a shot.
Half-Life Lambda Wars is free to play now on Steam for PC.