The modding community is a special bunch. Looking at an iconic game like Half-Life filled with dark themes of science and struggling against an alien invasion, it’s hard to imagine lighthearted characters such as Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon running around the title. However, as DFTG has covered before, we know that’s exactly the kind of thing modders have done.

As recently featured by Prima Games, a new mod is in development called “Year of the Dragon” that aims to bring Spyro and the dragon-based mechanics of his games to the world of Half-Life. A recent dev stream for the mod sees the creator talk about his reasoning behind bringing Spyro into Half-Life. He explains that after seeing Crash Bandicoot get his due in the N. Sane Trilogy, the modder decided to try his hand at a Spyro fan game – especially as the franchise is considered one of his own favorites.

“Once I saw this game’s success I knew that the Spyro series was also going to get the same treatment and it occurred to me that I could make a game about a relevant game series for a change,” he said. “I thought about several things I could do like making a fan game in an engine like Unity or Unreal, but I’ve always enjoyed using Goldsrc and Xash3D so I thought about the challenge of getting this purple dragon into Half-Life. And from there the mod pretty much came to life.”

The likes of Spyro flying, charging, and breathing fire around Black Mesa seems like an interesting time, to say the least. While a potentially fun time for fans, the creator explains that he also thought it would be a great challenge for himself and he hopes it will help him in the future with his future fan-game projects.

Now for the ‘why’ question. It’s to get famous obviously. Alright, the real reason is because why not, it’s a neat programming challenge for myself, and as I said above this can help me make a fan game after the initial game mechanics are put in. This can also help me with a Prospero remake sort-of-thing I mentioned on my Twitter but that’s for later.”

The mod is currently available through Moddb and receives updates monthly. Will you be checking out this cool new mod for yourself? Let us know your thoughts on the Half-Life Spyro mod and more in the comments section below. As always don’t forget to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter for 24/7 coverage of all things gaming and entertainment.

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