Lunar Descent mod for Half-Life 2

I released a small patch for Lunar Descent today, rebalancing the game's difficulty. The frustration with the last two levels surprised me, but the criticism of this section is fairly consistent. The patch makes the end sections MUCH easier when playing on Easy and Normal modes. Hard mode remains as difficult as it was; those who liked the hardcore nature of Hard should remain satisfied.

It's been a month and a bit since Lunar Descent's release, and I can now reflect a little on the project.

Lunar Descent started serious development on September 2013. Between then and November 25^th 2017, there were many distractions in my life, but the project remained in development for most of that time. It's the longest and hardest project I've ever worked on, and my feelings about the entire thing are incredibly mixed.

It's extremely difficult to make a game or mod. I didn't make it any easier for myself, admittedly; I decided to do everything myself (except music and voice acting). I wanted to make a game that looked visually striking, was challenging to play, and that featured a novel and exciting story. I elected – as I have in other mod projects – to be level designer, programmer, texture artist, story writer, and 3D modeller with minimal assistance.

It might seem like a bit of a mad undertaking – deciding to do everything myself meant juggling all kinds of tasks – but I had decided years ago that single-man projects were less risky. Back in 2006, I used to assemble medium-sized mod teams for my single-player mods. My only tasks were level design and programming. The trouble is... keeping yourself motivated on a hobby project with no financial return is one thing, keeping an entire team motivated I found nearly impossible. My one-man approach was entirely a practical decision. Still, I think Lunar Descent suffered as a result.

The mod's story direction – just to pick an example – came out extremely confused; most of the story was left for the player to discern from environmental clues, and there was a heavy reliance on narrative exposition from the protagonist. In many ways, the story-telling was a step backwards from Dissolution (though, I'd argue, every other aspect in Lunar Descent was superior to Dissolution).

The gameplay has been the most divisive aspect of all. I wanted to create a game where every enemy presented a serious threat to the player. Every single terrorist needed to be considered and approached carefully, or the player wouldn't survive the encounter. While feedback suggests the gameplay fell apart towards the end (I am hoping this patch will help rectify this a bit), I think the majority of the gameplay turned out as I originally envisioned. I'm very happy with most of the gameplay in Lunar Descent.

The art was, for once, widely appreciated. Most of my mods, no matter how much they were liked for their other attributes, were largely considered ugly and looking dated. Even those who disliked Lunar Descent mostly appreciated its art direction. I think this is one of the mod's most successful features. Considering how much time went into the art – I'd say easily 70%+ of development time – I'm glad it was well received.

One final thing I'd like to discuss is the download count. Dissolution achieved just over a thousand downloads in its first week of release, and that climbed to several thousand within a month or two of release. Lunar Descent, by comparison, has done extremely poorly.

At the time of writing, Lunar Descent received 756 downloads on ModDB. I ran a similar marketing campaign for Lunar Descent as I did Dissolution, so I believe a large factor in the reduced download count is the death of source modding – especially source single-player modding.

Modders have moved on to become game developers, using Unity and Unreal engines, and I think the mod players must've gone with them. This thought isn't a happy one, as some of my favourite gaming experiences have been had in Half-Life (1 & 2) single-player mods. I'd like to throw out a shout out to runthinkshootlive here – one of the few sites besides ModDB giving HL2 single-player projects good coverage. They put together an excellent profile for Lunar Descent, so be sure to check it out (https://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/lunar-descent/).

I'm happy I released Lunar Descent and it's a project I am mostly happy with. It suffers from over-ambition and, at times, confused direction; but I believe it achieved most of its gameplay and artistic ambitions. I might release more patches, but I am done with Half-Life 2 modding: I won't be making any new HL2 mods. Sadly, I think almost everybody is done with Half-Life 2 modding, too.

Thanks to everybody who played my various mods over the years.

-Aaron