2023 COUNTDOWN
Welcome to the Players Choice: Best Upcoming Mods of 2023 Results! The following mods have been selected by ModDB readers from the Top 100 nominees to determine which mods they are most anticipating for future release.
Evolutions is a "Halo Wars" style mod for Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars that features epic ground and air warfare on a massive scale. Evolutions brings many instruments of war from the Halo universe to life, allowing the player to fight as the Covenant or the UNSC in epic battles based on iconic Halo locales.
Awakening on a crashed train with only sparse memories of the past, and advanced combat tactics for fighting the enemies of Our Benefactors, step into the mind of a resistance fighter troubled by long lost memories as-well as mental and physical augmentation. The world we knew is gone, and all that remains is the oppressive Combine regime and the seemingly endless fight against them. Team up with the remaining resistance and explore locations both old and new in Outcast.
Hard-Life is a mod that aims to change how you play Half-Life. The game was difficult back in 1998 but we've all nearly memorized enemy patterns and locations. Rather than raising enemy health and damage in an artificial manner, we decided to overhaul how the the AI works. Enemies are more evasive, they move quicker, react faster, and are more deadly with their aim.
This isn't going to be like any ol' HL1 romp. There's a whole new story, characters, weapons, locations and mechanics. Travel through time and explore unique locations - ranging from medieval castles to ancient underground temples, to sci-fi laboratories, futuristic cities and more. Wreak havoc using a vast array of weapons - with each time period having its own weapon set you'll have no shortage of armaments to use in gunfights.
Return to Aperture Science, overrun by a rogue Combine AI with little patience and murderous intent. Solve puzzles that will challenge your three-dimensional thinking, and step through the Portal into a wholly different testing facility.
Welcome to World War II Named Black Orchestra: Worldfront 37-54, this modification will allow you to experience an overhauled Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm 1 with Heroes of the West. It includes the North African campaign, as well as completely new theatres to the series.
Infinite Finality is a Half-Life 2: Episode 2 modification that attempts to recreate the storyline of Epistle Three.
Released during the event (so you can grab it now), Project Brutality is a fast-paced gameplay mod that aims to amp up classic Doom like never before.
2ND PLACE
Step closer, kin of our kin, for we have gospel to share. Having delivered the One Free Man to safety, Father Grigori, Archangel of Ravenholm, must now make his final exodus - and bury the town he once held so dear beneath ash.
After a long period of silience, Urban Chaos is back making progress on their eagerly anticipated mod. The game takes place in the eve of the Seven Hour War. Fighting against blood shedding synths and frightening aliens, Adrian Shephard has to struggle his way with his fellow comrades from the Phoenix Command, with the main objective of stopping the construction of a Combine Citadel. In his journey he will find what has happened to the world, moments before the Seven Hour War.
Honorable Mentions
Before we present the winners, the following mods polled strongly and deserve our attention for either narrowly missing out, or they have previously placed in a best upcoming countdown and are ineligible to place again. These mods have significantly impressed us over 2023, and we are eagerly anticipating their future developments.
Black Mesa: Blue Shift
Half-Life Decay: Solo Mission
Half-Life: Dark Matter
Half-Life: Enriched
Star Wars: Interregnum
Sins of the Prophets
Kingdoms of Arda
Half-Life: The Core
Supported by mod.io
The 2023 awards are proudly supported by mod.io. Launch an official mod community for your game with powerful moderation, discovery, events, marketplace and metrics systems, using our cross-platform mod SDKs and plugins for Unity and Unreal Engine. Interested in adding mods to your game and finding out more? Reach out for a demonstration.
Congratulations to every winner in the Player's Choice: Best Upcoming Mods of 2023! Congratulations too to every mod who was nominated and participated in voting. With the Best Upcoming Mods announced, the final Mod of the Year results will go live on December 28.
Uh oh, little typo among Honourable Mentions. Two titles merged together.
edit: not anymore
Truly great moment for all of us involved!
Urban Chaos getting 1st place was something I wasn't expecting considering we didn't do anything special for MOTY, seems like alot of people care for the old OF2 mod after all.
I and a lot of other people are just glad that it's back and in good hands, keep up the good work! 😸
Well, that just tells you people have really high hopes in your project, no pressure at all :p
Overall, OpFor2 is for many of us a decade year old very promising project, it was even more frustrating when they released RED demo and we saw all that was left WIP : the floating Citadel, the Proto Combine… this project was too good to be dead and even if we had Entropy Zero 1 and 2, Through the City, as « opposing force » stuff… well, this is not the OpFor2 we’re still waiting for.
Good luck anyways.
I am absolutely thrilled by the news of Salvation snagging 2nd place in best upcoming mod! This achievement wouldn't have been possible without the incredible support and enthusiasm for our project.
Thank you so much!
Same here! RTBR's thrilled to have a good showing in this year's Best Upcoming.
Marco and I am extremely thankful (and shocked!) to have Outcast be chosen by the community as number 9. We are eternally grateful for the love and support of the modding community. Huge congratulations to everyone on the list, lets make 2024 an even better year for modding.
Hey voters, you made right choice
Some more HL1 and HL2 mods wouldn't hurt. I mean, it's not like 10/18 mods (including honorable mentions) are mods about HL. Anyway, i am sure modders worked hard so congratulations to everyone.
Looootta GoldSrc and Source mods in here lol
Half-Life always seem to carry these events, don't you think?
It was the alpha and will be the omega of world-wide modding.....oh wait, the lambda :P
Hot DAMN the half-life modding scene is on fire this year!
Just like every year.
It's all lambda. Urban Chaos was the unexpected here. And even we're waiting for more! Infinite finality I cannot wait even more for this to put on this remembrance!
glad to see Urban Chaos here
I might catch some flak here, but I am kinda.... disappointed that 7 of the 10 mods are Half Life/Portal ones :S