Peer Review mod for Half-Life 2

Yo yo yo, and ho ho ho, bros, non-bros and occasional bros! How’s it goes? Hopefully you lovelies have all been great, because holy whoa, have we. We know the longer gaps between updates can leave you in suspense. But rest assured; the back half of this year has been pretty fantastic for Peer Review. So, let’s dive in, yeah?

As of our last update, we had 5 out of 9 of the game’s missions playable*, front-to-back. During the last 6 months we had our work cut out for us with the missions Crossfire and Intensity. Our renditions of both missions are actually quite large in scale, significantly more than we’d have expected. But we kept in gear, trudging in the sludge, and beaming our matrices, and we’re happy to say that both missions join the ranks of playable. That makes a total of 7 out of 9 missions playable front-to-back!

That’s a lot of playability! It’s almost like a full game now. Every mission still has quite a bit of work remaining, but this is still a huge milestone. So huge, in fact, that it means we meet all of our internal criteria to bring us out of the realm of Alpha 2. Please pick up your PSR party poppers and pizza pies, as Peer Review has officially entered Alpha 3! Whoo!

We’re super excited and motivated to see our little brainchild come together. Next up, of course, are the remaining unplayable missions; Dual Access, and Rift. We deliberately left these for last, and, well, I guess last has finally come. With those missions in place, we’ll be on the road to Beta, where all the final polish and art passing comes together. Exciting!

Speaking of art, where are we on art? Where art we? Wherefore art thou not get to the pretty pictures? Well hold your jets and cool your horses, we’ve got that, too.

At the time of our last update, the missions Crossfire and Intensity were getting their gameplay finalized. The art team, not ones to twiddle any of their three thumbs, have been hammering out those levels’ art while the design progressed. Most recently under art-ing is Crossfire. Take a look at how that’s coming together:

And after you’ve crossed through Crossfire, you’ll trudge into the nice labs of Intensity. But, god, look at you, all covered in who-knows-what. Thankfully this happens all the time, and we’ve got just the thing for you.

The back half of the game isn’t getting all the attention, however. Other missions are still getting their looks sorted out. Everything is under control, as evidenced by the Resonance control room!

I hear you, I hear you; “That’s really cool, but I’m a nasty little sewage boy. Bring back the dirt!” Worry not, the New Mexico desert’s got plenty of that filth for you. You and your wheels.

With that we’re all done with the pictures, and in the home stretch of this update. Don’t panic, you’ll hear from us again, soon. But if you’re panicking extra hard and need to hear from us again immediately, we planned for that! You can get in touch with us over in the Peer Review Community Discord Server. Ask us questions, hear about how the game’s going, join in on some dev streams, it’s a good time!

For those of you who not only love us but also possess some skills, we’re always on the hunt look-out for new team members. If you're looking to volunteer for the project, head over to our team member application form and show us what ya got! With the exception of audio and writing-based positions we’ve got space.

And so ends another progress report. We’ve made huge progress this year, and as we head into Alpha 3 we’re extremely excited to see what the next one brings us. We’ll be back later to keep you in the know. See ya soon, yo!