Despite Garry’s Mod having been Launched in 2006, the game still has one of the most active modding communities. It’s not a surprise that the game is still so popular years later, as the sandbox lets anyone do whatever they want when they play. From premade maps and games to new ones you can install, or ones you can build on your own, the possibilities are endless.
There are hundreds of thousands of mods available for the game, as people keep creating and sharing new content, so trying to shuffle through all of that to find the content you want can be rather challenging. Luckily, with Steam’s built in rating system, it’s not too hard to find the most popular mods that everyone loves to play.
10 Horde
Horde is a Garry’s Mod game mode that sends wave after wave of enemies after you, and it could be played alone or with friends. Earn rewards as you successfully fight off your enemies, buy items and level up your weapons to help against the harder waves. There are different player classes and perks to choose from too, making the game more interesting.
The mod is also customizable, letting you add anything you want into the shop, and also letting you choose any NPC to spawn as the enemy. You can also customize the game’s difficulty, and make certain enemies become bosses if you want.
9 Half-Life Resurgence
The modders behind Half-Life Resurgence have taken on a large task: recreating every possible thing from the Half-Life series that they can. From NPCs to other entities, and even some weapons, there is a lot this mod has to offer. They even included some things that were cut from the game, whether only appearing in code or having been in beta versions but not the official releases.
Bring your favorite characters into your game to play along with, or just grab your favorite weapons from the series to fight your friends. The choice is yours.
8 Prop Hunt
Prop hunt is one of the most popular game modes in Garry’s Mod, without a doubt. It’s something that's played all the time, from normal games among friends to popular YouTubers playing and streaming their games. Split off into two teams for a twist on classic hide and seek, where the hiding team disguises itself as props to hide and plain sight.
Try to find the right prop and the right spot to hide to last the round, as the seekers have a limited amount of guesses. You need a minimum of two players in order to play - and with a lot of maps to choose from, you and your friends are sure to have a lot of fun.
7 Literally, The World
Literally, the World lets you spawn a new entity into your game: a small copy of whatever map you’re playing in. This entity updates real time, showing you all the props that exist on the map, whether they were already there or you’ve added them on your own. It will show small versions of people moving around too, acting almost like a mini map you can hold in your hand.
There are a couple of secrets this entry has too, almost acting as if it's the real map with things like earthquake sounds and effects if it is hit.
6 StormFox 2
Change the aesthetics of your game with StormFox 2, bringing different weather patterns and lighting effects. It’s fully customizable too, letting you choose what effects you want and when you want them. Enable a day and night cycle for your game and then bring in the weather, with options including rain, thunder, fog, and more.
There are dynamic clouds blowing idly in the wind across your screen, and the environments also have their own effects, like the pouring rain. Snow will even replace textures to cover the map in snow, bringing more realism to the mod.
5 GPaint
Create your own paintings to display around your maps with GPaint. With different colors and pen thickness options, you could create a masterpiece, or you could mess with your friends as they watch you draw in real time. You can whitelist friends too, so you can both draw together on the same image, for better or for worse.
Save your artwork for later, or upload images from your computer to leave around the map. You could even paint over those uploaded images, leaving you with endless painting possibilities.
4 The Instrument
The Instrument brings a new item to your game, allowing you to play songs from your keyboard. With color-coded mapping between your keyboard and the on-screen piano, playing sound from it is a breeze. There’s a lot of customizing you can do with it too, including choosing from several types of instruments or changing the key you’re playing in.
If that isn’t enough for you, the mod also includes access to instructions on how to play thousands of popular songs, so no musical skill is required to play your favorite songs for your friends.
3 VFire
VFire brings an update specifically to fire in the game. There are a few things it does. One of them is changing the default texture of the fires in Garry’s Mod to make it look more realistic. The other is changing it to actually behave like actual fire, from growing bigger, spreading to other surfaces, and even burning down everything that is flammable in its vicinity.
All you have to do to spawn the fire is ignite a prop or cause an explosion. It will grow if you feed it with any flammable object, it attaches to any flammable surface or character, and it can even be affected by wind in the environment if there is any.
2 Default Cubemap
One of the biggest things that plagues any game is broken mods that may never be updated again. As a game updates, the mods fall behind, and if the dev doesn’t update it, everything breaks. Improved Default Cubemap implements a fix so that they are still playable.
Fix the lighting and textures of these maps so that some of the props and other objects are no longer glowing or orange tinted. It’s especially useful if you’ve been playing for a long time and have a lot of old mods downloaded.
1 Zeta Players Brings Advanced NPCS
Have you ever wanted to play with NPCs who can actually interact in your sandbox? With Zeta Players, you can. The mod uses the nextbots NPC creator to give these NPCs more sentience. Now, they can do whatever they want to in your sandbox, from fighting each other to placing down their own props and other objects.
The NPCs are highly customizable, letting you mess around with them and add them into your sandbox to play around with you. Bring the chaos to your game now.