u/veculus

I thought since some people seem to still have issues with finding games I'd love to start a thread here where people can just share cool looking games or games they found good. I'll start:

• Mouse Fishing - Looks highly polished and a perfect showcase of what s&box games could be
• Terry Games - Squid Game inspired social game
• Only Up s&box Edition - Only Up in s&box
• Grubs - It's pretty much Worms 3D but in s&box
• Minifly - Cute small arcade flying game made buy Kenney
• Opium - Just a short demo but a really cool looking project, reminds me of Condemned
• Cadavra - Cool idea for a oldschool multiplayer
• Boating - Multiplayer game where you use a paddle to move through a labyrinth with traps
• MOMENTUM - Looks super cool, a movement based shooter. Right now a WIP project.
• Slime - Slime Pikman (not sure how to describe that)

No matter where I look right now, people are picking S&box apart and constantly comparing it to Garry’s Mod. I get why that happens. Garry’s Mod is the obvious inspiration for the sandbox gamemode. But I think the comparison is starting to hurt the conversation more than it helps.

Is S&box perfect right now? No, definitely not.

Did it launch with a lot of low-effort games? Also yes.

But does that mean the whole thing is bad, or that it has failed because it is not immediately Garry’s Mod 2? I really don’t think so.

Garry’s Mod has had more than 15 years to become what it is. It has years of community content, culture, addons, servers, modes, nostalgia, and weird experiments behind it. Comparing S&box at this stage to modern GMod feels unfair, especially when S&box seems to be aiming at something broader than just being "GMod again, but newer."

What excites me about S&box is not only the sandbox mode. It is the possibility that talented developers can build completely different kinds of games inside this ecosystem.

I remember getting access to the dev version about a year ago and feeling pretty disappointed at first. But then I saw a singleplayer Facepunch project that changed my mind. It had a grainy, low-res horror style, kind of similar to the dungeon crawler we have now, but it played like a small singleplayer horror/action game. You woke up in a basement, found a crowbar, and fought through an abandoned house in a way that reminded me of Condemned.

That was the moment where I realized this is not just "Source 1 sandbox again." S&box can support experiences that feel completely different from what we usually associate with Garry’s Mod.

And now we already have things like My Summer Cottage, which is built in S&box and distributed as its own third-party game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3115420/My_Summer_Cottage/

That is the part people should be paying attention to. If the tools are good enough, S&box could become a home for all kinds of weird, creative, small-to-mid-sized multiplayer games. Think of the kind of games that blow up because they are fun with friends: Lethal Company, Phasmophobia, PEAK, Content Warning, and so on. S&box feels like it could become a great place for that kind of experimentation.

But that only happens if the community does not hate it to death before it has time to grow.

The low-effort games are annoying, yes. But that is also something the community can influence. Don’t play the bad stuff. Rate it honestly. Support the interesting projects. Give feedback to the developers who are actually trying. And hopefully Facepunch can help push things forward with game jams, better discovery, and ways to attract more serious creators.

I don’t care if S&box replaces Garry’s Mod. It does not need to. If I want to play Garry’s Mod, I can still launch Garry’s Mod.

What I care about is whether S&box becomes a strong platform for new games, new ideas, and new creators. There is a lot of rough stuff right now, sure. But there is also a lot of potential, and I think reducing it to “bad GMod with AI slop” is way too shallow.

TL;DR: S&box has issues right now, especially with low-effort games and rough discovery, but judging it only as “bad Garry’s Mod 2” misses the point. GMod had 15+ years to become what it is, while S&box has the potential to become a broader platform for weird, creative, friend-focused games. The community should criticize the bad stuff, but also support the interesting projects instead of writing the whole thing off too early.

EDIT: For those who are interested. Hop on their Discord and check the #waywo channel. See here: https://discord.com/channels/833983068468936704/1019853650052522004 to see how much creative shit people put out there. It's amazing. Just now I've seen an Animal Crossing clone, a Tarkov-like game, a game that's similar to this "Getting Over It" one.