What are your favorite custom games?
Custom games/game modes/rulesets give gamers the ability to enjoy some games nearly infinitely. Gary's Mod, Rust, Minecraft, Robolox, Fortnite, and many others keep people coming back as people create new ways to play.
When I was younger I played a ton of Warcraft 3 custom games. I remember there being a solid ~2 years when that was almost entirely what I would play whenever I was able to use the computer and then another 3-4 years after where I would play at least a couple of times a week.
I remember loving custom games like:
- Defense of the Ancients (DotA)
- Island Troll Tribes (also Jungle Troll Tribes to a lesser extent)
- Risk (and it's many versions)
- Wintermaul and Wintermaul wars (along with all the other tower defense and tower defense wars)
- Vamperism
- Pest Control
- Many others as this list would drag on
I remember chatting with a lot of interesting people, though I didn't have any friendships I made move past Warcraft 3 in to other games.
I know there are many other games with custom games or customer game modes that the community developed, with DotA 2 coming full circle from being the sequel to a custom game to having custom games of its own.
To get the conversation going:
- What games had your favorite custom games?
- What custom games were your favorite?
- Did you make or contribute to any custom games?
- Any favorite memories?
StarCraft Brood War
WarCraft 3
Halo 3
Halo Reach
Celeste
One time I bought a 3D pinball game, and it came with an OS. The pinball game was just so-so, but I customized the heck out of the operating system. I used that thing every day for years.
Bringing me back to the days of Snood and Bonzi Buddy!
Bonzi Buddy corrupted Windows on the family PC. Hated that thing ever since.
On the upside, a couple weeks later, once I realized I had the Win95/ME install CD, I did my first Windows reinstall. First of many!
They still sell Snood on the Mac App store. I should know, I bought it a few months ago...
Apparently it's on Steam, also!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/964040/Snood/
That's really cool! Free, too, apparently. I think I got their paid version that has some QoL modernization.
Oh man, we played that game so much back in the day. I had no idea it was customizable!
Prop Hunt, in various FPS games over the years. There's just something about trying to find the least conspicuous place to exist as a bucket or wall that tickles my brain.
I’m on mobile and can’t find the link to my old comment at the moment, but I’ve posted on Tildes before about the world of DOOM WADs, aka downloading free user-created maps and levels for a lot of the old id2 engine games from the early-mid 90s. It requires a healthy bit of tinkering to get everything playing nicely, but there is a TON of content out there for free (if you own the original game files that are needed to run the mods). Some play just like old DOOM games, some might as well be entirely new games in and of themselves, like Ashes 2063 and Castlevania: Simon’s Destiny. If anyone is interested in learning more about how to do this, I’d be happy to help get them set up!
Ninja edit: Selaco is a modern (paid) DOOM WAD taken to the extreme - an entirely new game built off the same engine. The devs just chose to charge for this one (and I don’t blame them) vs. many other free offerings.
Huge fan of DOOM WADS, I made a post about it awhile ago.
I actually got the popular DOOM source port for Android Delta Touch but then quickly realized I never picked up mobile controls for FPS games and haven't spent the time getting used it.
I'm a Chocolate DOOM guy usually, but I've been thinking about diving down the rabbit hole of all the DOOM Wads. A great list for people looking to try some WADs out and for some history: https://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/
I’m jumping the gun mentioning this, because I’m not even done with the proof of concept yet, but I’m working on setting up a sort of self-contained DoomRunner configuration that has all of the Cacoward-winning DOOM mods preloaded and preconfigured so it all works “out of the box” with zero tinkering for the end user. If I can figure out a few OS-specific scripting tweaks, my hope is to be able to share it out with anyone interested. End goal would be that folks who own the requisite IWADs could download my installer package, plug a few file paths in, and have access to ~350 of the best WADs and WAD packs. It’s a niche that I’d love to get more people interested in!
That sounds awesome, I would definitely be interested and I'm sure having that would be a huge boon to getting people into exploring the many amazing WADs out there.
I remember I played through DOOM some when I was younger, and then I had some time during COVID to go back and give it a go, and it holds up so well.
We had a custom mode for Halo 3 lan parties called TTT: Take the Tower. It was only playable on the Ascension map. You could add a turret to the tower on one side and I think it used modified juggernaut rules so 1 player spawned in the tower and the rest of the players all had to assault the tower but they had no shields and were easily picked off by the turret. It was great fun.
For Warcraft 3 I enjoyed all the previously mentioned maps as well as some of my favorites like
-Hero Line Wars
-X Hero Siege
-Uther Party
-Enfos
-Autumn TD (my personal favorite tower defense)
Warcraft 3 is in my top three all time games and it's an atrocity what blizzard did to it with that piece of garbage they call "reforged".
I forgot about Hero Line Wars, such an awesome game!
To quote myself from before: https://tildes.net/~games/1rjx/guild_wars_reforged_official_launch_trailer#comment-gwbb
"We should be fair to the small indie company Activision-Blizzard, after all they were only worth a paltry ~71+ billion USD in 2020 when Reforged was released. They clearly couldn't afford to spend enough money to do Warcraft 3 justice. /S"
The Age of Empires 2 custom maps. The only one I can clearly remember is "Castle Blood", but there were many others that were also tremendous fun.
I also spent a fair amount of time in the various arcade modes on StarCraft 2, once upon a time.
I don't think I ever tried Age of Empires 2, though I was a bit too young when I played it to think to go look for them. I never got back in to AoE2, but I have friends who still play regularly.
That made me think that I never got in to custom campaigns for Warcraft 3 either and there's probably a whole wealth of content I missed out on there.
Kind of a stretch, but I've been kind of jaded by most style of maps from Trackmania (the 2020 one).
The die and retry kind of play-style still works, but I don't have the appeal of launching a Track of the Day or Weekly Short anymore, as either the style of blocks or decoration still feels kinda stuck to a certain style.
But I've found a particular creator: Aries__90, and I feel they captured a special appeal of having tracks that are either targeting a somewhat realistic setting, or just unexpected decorations that serves as weird playgrounds that are not already optimized and known from 20 years of trackmania experience.
In no particular order, some recent tracks that I particularly liked:
The list could continue for so long, I think I've played all of their maps. And it has been my sole reason to boot the game now
Special mention to the_random_one with his series of port of old Need For Speed tracks, my favorite would be NFSIII - ROCKY PASS - Stadium, but all are just so fun.
Worms: Armageddon was maintained and improved by community developers for many years. Mods, some of which were later folded back into the main game, improved the already highly versatile built in scheme system, allowing for the creation of all kinds of goofy game modes.
My community played this game for many years. One of my friends made a repository software for installing additional content across our group, which we loaded with additional sound banks, maps, etc. Some of us made many custom schemes. We ran tournaments. It has been around a decade now since we stopped playing, but some of us played a few matches last weekend for old times' sake and it was a lot of fun (though we're not roping nearly as well as we used to...)
We might play again one of these days. Would anyone like to join in? This game supports up to 6 teams per match and 7 connected players (those not playing can watch). It costs €3 on Steam this week.
It's amazing to me that a "Beloved, still actively played multiplayer PC game from 1999" Jeapordy card would have like 4-5 correct answers. AOE2 was mentioned elsewhere. I will add Unreal Tournament to the list for its mutators, without naming any specific ones. Because they typically only affect some aspect of gameplay and can be combined freely there's a combinatorial explosion of possibly fun, interesting and silly setups.
AoE2 is having its resurgence right now. One of the best players is also a decent content creator and he's hosting a tournament featuring some of the biggest RTS streamers. Regardless, it's pulling thousands of viewers a day.
https://aoe2.criticalbit.gg/kings-gauntlet/
For a game this old it's amazing. Player count is massive too.
Yeah, I was thinking Unreal Tournament as well, but I didn't know quite how to describe it as custom. But really, instagib in one of those maps where you're shrunken compared to the room? Too fun, and a totally different style of game
Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike: Source Surf servers and maps. I spent countless hours playing custom maps. Servers tinker with the setting so when you're on an angle, you slide forward. Map makers make courses using these angles surfaces, propelling you to faster and faster speeds.
Some maps are built for time trials, some for skill, some for combat, many a combination of all three. My favorite was a combat map, surf_japan, but I spent hundreds of hours on surf servers doing random map rotations.
Back in the early '00s, I played a ton of Unreal Tournament 99, 2k3, and 2k4. I ended up as co-leader of an Instagib Capture the Flag (iCTF) clan for a while.
I loved the purity of the instagib mode. No pickups (weapons, armor, power ups, health, etc.) to worry about. If you got killed and respawned you immediately had just as much of a chance to return the favor. Since everyone was using the same weapon, it was all about your skills at aiming and dodging vs. theirs, combined with how well you know the map.
And occasionally if I felt like something really crazy, I'd go on a server running 150% LG iCTF - 150% speed, low gravity, instagib capture the flag. Everyone would be zooming around like crazy, jumping like fleas, and blasting each other out of the air. Good times.
I think it was last week that it would be cool to recreate the WC3 classic Footman Frenzy into a modern version. If I could code, which I can't, I think it'd be something I'd like to create.
There were so many memorable WC3 custom maps that I'd like to play again:
Water Wars.
Tides of Blood (both WW and ToB predated DotA).
Escape from Gay Heaven.
Orc Gladiators.
Wintermaul Wars.
Hero Line Wars.
And too many others to count, some with sped up Linkin Park background music, others without.
I see others have mentioned the same maps and it just goes to show that they were really good games in their own right.
Stalker COP with the atmosfear mod (and i think absolute nature?) was the most immersed I've ever felt in a video game. Aomething about running for it when a blowout started to slowly blow in on the wind and hiding in a small shack until it passed was insane
In Arma 3 I've spent an unbelievable amount of time playing solo antistasi. Mostly because i never had a group tonplay with, but that and the old man campaign were incredible.
I don't kkow where we draw the dividing line between custom games and mods that have their own campaigns, and those two are definitely the second on that list, but they would be my choice :)
I miss those days, but age, disability, and an obsolete skill set combine to make me mostly retired from modding in custom games into games that allowed for it. While I've got a lifetime of making my own hobbyist games that never go anywhere, its better for me when I can take an existing framework and prototype ideas quicker.
Focusing specifically on projects people might have heard of, I did a lot of dabbling with Unreal Tournament (1999), most notably my own fork of the SiegeUT mod that was about constructing buildings to defend a base or to supply teammates to attack enemy bases. I implemented basic AI support so it would engage with making and using buildings itself, and added more things to build, more weapons, etc. Only much later did I find out that there were other, better known forks of the mod, but it was still a good learning experience.
But the thing that's likely most enduring today is Battle for Wesnoth. I wrote a lot of standalone mods back in the pre 1.0 days (~2004-2006), some of which still endure today (Great Race, possibly others) many versions later thanks to others porting them for me, without me even requesting it. I also took part in the first DotA-like custom game developed there (DotW) as the main person gathering playtesters and making balance adjustments based on feedback and my own play experience. Wesnoth helped me get through a tough time in life where everything was falling apart, and some of my experimental ideas carried through to other players' Wesnoth projects, like the wave survival genre.
I've played a bit of Wesnoth over the years and enjoy it, awesome to hear about someone's experiencing in adding to it. I have a feeling my friend who played a ton of Wesnoth growing up has probably played your mods/mods influenced by the ones you created. That's cool to hear that modding served as an outlet for you.
Are there any games you play these days where you see something and get the itch to "fix it" through modding or that give you ideas for mods that you would like to make if you were able to?
If you want to name drop, I went by "lunar2" in the Wesnoth community, the mods that credit that alias are referring to my contributions back then or are projects I made solo. Not active there anymore and haven't looked around in several years at this point, but I know when I last checked that the modding scene is still thriving.
Certainly, there's a lot of things I'd still want to mod! And I have the time for it, but a few things get in the way that I don't have easy answers to. Most games these days are built on an engine like Unity/Godot/UE/etc and my programming knowledge is essentially self-taught/high school level. I've also got issues related to my health, such as having to limit my hand use due to carpal tunnel + de quervains.
There's a ton more I could say, but to keep it shorter I'll give two examples of more recent modding:
The live/asynchronous multiplayer auto battler genre as a whole. I've really wanted one to exist that has the depth I want, without the accessibility issues (fast timers, colorblind) and without being ran by scummy elements I don't want to support. Instead of modding, I made my own. And while the current result of that is a game that I find quite fun, its also one limited by my own limitations - I don't know where to begin to make it functional online (its local multiplayer + AI currently), I can't afford nor draw my own art (and free assets I've found so far are limiting for a game with >600 cards, meaning I have the unenviable choice between no art at all, genned art, or art that barely matches what the card says), and so on. Since I have essentially no networking in any sense of the word, I feel stuck, and tend to revisit it a couple of times a year when I get an idea that I am capable of implementing.
Games like Slay the Spire 2, Brotato, etc that offer open modding. In this case, the simple answer is that others are capable of adding content a lot faster than I am, so I don't bother. I looked at StS2's documentation recently and figured I could make it happen given enough time, but then I look over at Steam Workshop and see that others have already done so much, so instead I wait for their projects to finish and save myself the trouble.
For me, Halo 3 had some of the best custom games ive ever experienced. I remember the wide variety of interesting and unique modes that were made with forge, using interesting maps and ruleset to keep each one unique and fresh.
Best notable mode I can think of was FAT KID. It was essentially infection, a mode where 1 player spawns as a zombie with a sword and gravity hammer and has to "infect" all the other players by killing them and turning them into zombies. Except with fat kid, there was a specific map to play it on with specific modifications to the player stats.
The map was a big open courtyard leading to what looked like a firing range. There was also an enclosed ramp/hallway on the right that spiraled up and and around the outside of the courtyard until it got to the top level, which opened back on to the courtyard.
The fat kid would spawn on the far end of the courtyard, away from the firing range and below the opening at the top of the ramps. There was all the most powerful weapons spawning at the other side for the player to shot them with. The fat kid would move extremely slow, but had the maximum amount of shield and the maximum amount of shield regen, making them functionally Invincible unless everyone focused them for awhile OR someone assassinated them. Any players the fat kid killed, would spawn as super fast zombies with no shields.
It made for a lot of fun to have everyone hanging out focusing their attacks on them, until someone eventually got bored/greedy and decided they were gonna try to assassinate them. This almost always resulted in people dying to them and more zombies joining the fat kids ranks, making it harder for the human players to win by time out. So much fun with the bigger the lobby, the more fun it became.