Headcrab Frenzy!

Headcrab Frenzy! is a free dynamic action Half-Life mod which allows you to quench the desire to destroy these little bouncy critters to your heart's content, hold records, get achievements, and try your hand at cooperative gameplay, competing in public statistics. Two game modes, six maps, several headcrab types and gradually increasing "frenzy" scale which can be periodically vent - that's the crux of the mod. Is it casual? There is no doubt. But that's not so simple. To achieve high results and score more points you'll have to resort to various tricks: make combos, ensnare headcrabs, use power-ups (there are four in the game), and prevent other players from scoring, pushing them away by a secondary attack of your crowbar. Each map has its own tricks. By discovering them, you'll find out more ways to get high scores and take the first place in tournament tables!

This is our first experience with Steam. The game passed the whole pipeline from initial Greenlight submission to the final Steam release. We've also learnt SteamWorks SDK, and a couple of non-trivial hacks were implemented, to enable stats and achievements in Half-Life mod without access to the engine's source code.

Get this FREE game on Steam! Please note that it requires that you own Half-Life.

Game Rules

  • You start game with 5 lives. Every time you die, you may respawn, until your lives are zero. If they are, the game ends. 
  • When you kill 40 headcrabs, you gain extra health points. 
  • When you kill 200 headcrabs, you gain extra life. 
  • Your health is regenerating with the rate of 2 hp/sec. The faster you move, the faster the regeneration process is. 
  • Maximum number of alive headcrabs increases over the time. 
  • Headcrabs' health and damage increases over the time also! 
  • Killing several headcrabs very fast results in a COMBO
  • Combo temporarily increases you crowbar's damage, the higher is combo - the longer is increase. 
  • When you kill headcrabs, you gain "frenzy". Combos give additional "frenzy" points. 
  • If your "frenzy" is full, you may activate it with reload key, to do 16x damage and get extra score! 
  • First crowbar swing does full damage, subsequent do the half. 
  • Secondary attack of the crowbar is more powerful, but is slower. The amount of "frenzy" points got for killing by such attack, depends on weapon's upgrade value. If the secondary attack doesn't kill a headcrab, it pushes him away. It is also possible to push away other players! 
  • Every minute your crowbar is slightly upgraded - it does more damage, critical hit chance is increased, and "frenzy" mode lasts for a longer time. 
  • If you kill headcrab tracking you with anything but you crowbar, you get an extra score! This is called "Nice catch"
There are more minor rules - just play and discover them!

Game modes

  • Ladder - different headcrab types are spawned sequentially. 
  • Random - all headcrab types are spawned randomly. Ladder mode goes into this mode after all types are spawned.

Power-ups

  • Invulnerability - player is physically invulnerable for all damage types. 
  • Invisibility - headcrabs don't attack a player although still track him. 
  • Regeneration - health regeneration is 3 times faster (6 hp/sec). 
  • Lightning – while attacking, the crowbar periodically makes an electric discharge to the nearest target. The discharge has chain effect stacking up to 8 targets.
Powerups last for 20 seconds. They respawn in 1 min plus-minus several seconds in a single player game. There may be powerups of the certain type on maps, or a random powerup - it may be different on every respawn. Server may turn powerups off or tweak their respawn times.

Maps

There are 6 maps in the mod. After completing a level and learning the score, press an action key in several seconds, and you'll travel to the next map (in multiplayer) or to the start map (in singleplayer). To complete Headcrab Frenzy! for 100%, you have to win each map for each skill level (easy, medium, and hard).

Cooperative

Start the game after all players are in. It also can be restarted (using a hcf_restart command). To restart an internet server, including official public server, use a spectator vote system (press DUCK, then VOTES, then select a restart vote in the menu). Your multiplayer score is published on statistics server (only if you play on an official public server). Player is identified by his Steam ID. Please note that your score is published ONLY if you complete the level (either all players are dead, or a time limit is hit), and server performs a level change.

New Graphics Features

  • high-resolution textures and decals;
  • advanced texture scripts with layers;
  • procedural water;
  • screen-space raytraced reflections (SSRR);
  • character shadows;
  • dynamic 3D text;
  • volumetric light glares.
Half-Life was released in 1998, and we decided to upgrade it's renderer a bit! Experience new immersive graphics with large textures, animated effects, procedural water and shadows. And certainly a popular screen-space reflection effect that fully exploits the capabilities of Shader Model 3.0 hardware!

System Requirements

  • CPU 500 MHz (1 GHz CPU recommended);
  • 128 MB RAM (512 MB RAM recommended);
  • 64 MB video card (NVIDIA GeForce 8600/9600GT, ATI/AMD Radeon HD2600/3600 class hardware with OpenGL 2.1 support or better is recommended);
  • 200 MB storage space;
  • Windows XP or newer.

Screenshot Gallery

           

External Links