The Black Mesa remake of the original Half-Life has been a long, long time in the making. The main parts of the game landed a few years ago, but it was years again until the game's final Xen segments were also recreated. The team behind it made the original Half-Life look better than ever and made it playable for a whole new generation of gamers. To celebrate that, the new Xen museum will let you explore the development process like never before, opening up over 50 work-in-progress levels.
The Xen Museum is fully playable and incorporates three distinct biomes, each covering a major part of the Xen storyline: Xen, Gonarch's Lair, and Interloper. There are interactive computers in each section which let players choose which version of the level they want to make their way through.
"Each map has several versions, taking you from the beginning of its development to near the end," explained Crowbar Collective. "Allowing you to actually witness first-hand how the map evolved over time."
"We hope you enjoy this fun and interactive tour of our intensely difficult five years of development. We thought this was a really cool and unique way to show off the way a game can develop and evolve over time. We've never quite seen anything like it, and we hope you guys have as much of a blast playing it as we did making it!".
The developer warns that loading times are quite lengthy due to the unpolished nature of many of the levels, and the sheer number of assets this mod contains. There are also some bugs and crashes, so remember you're playing with unfinished levels here.
If you want to explore the Xen Museum, you can download it on the Steam Workshop and access it through the main game.
