In an update posted on its Steam page, the development team behind the mod Lambda Wars announced that the Half-Life 2 real-time strategy project has exited beta. Including single-player, co-op, and multiplayer modes, Lambda Wars features two factions, the Combine and the Rebels, allowing players to recreate the combat of Half-Life 2 from a top-down angle. The launch update will implement Half-Life 2's "lost" enemies, including crab synths and mortar synths from the original game's art book.

The mod itself is based on the code for Alien Swarm, which was turned into a full game from a Source engine-based mod released for free by Valve in 2010; in a post on Reddit, one of the mod team members said that during the 13 years of development, how many people outlined how many people have worked on the game: "Many developers have come and gone, but the lead programmer started and finished the project." The developers received a handful of monetary donations for their time, but ultimately the game was a passion project.

As for me, I remember seeing the first steps of this mod over 10 years ago when it was called "Half-Life 2: Wars" and I wanted to play it so badly. Now, incredibly, it can be done. I love these inspiring mod stories for that reason. Lambda Wars can be found on Steam.