Cvoxalury has released the first part of the Dark Interval mod for Half Life 2. This mod aims to restore certain parts of older drafts of Valve’s first-person shooter. Therefore, gamers will find various original locations, characters and plot points that didn’t make it to the retail version.

According to its description, this mod intends to provide a complete game experience.

“Rather than restoring disparate bits and pieces, the team instead aims at building a complete and stylistically coherent world by drawing inspiration from many original concepts and drafts provided by Valve in their book Raising the Bar. This naturally involves filling some blanks and discarding some failed or played out designs.”

This basically means that Dark Interval doesn’t include original levels found in the “leaked” version of Half-Life 2. Instead, this mod features brand new maps which were built from the ground up.

This first part of the Dark Itnerval mod features four new chapters – the Prologue, revamped Welcome to City 17, Manhack Arcade, and Kleiner’s Lab. In shot, this first part comes with 11 new/reworked levels.

Those interested can download the mod from here. Do note that this mod requires an installed copy of Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer. It’s also worth pointing out that Dark Interval does not require HL2, nor the Episodes. This is a standalone release, meaning that everyone can enjoy it.

After downloading the file, players will have to unzip and place the ‘darkinterval-release’ folder in their \sourcemods\ folder. Then, they’ll have to enable ‘-upcoming’ beta option for Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer. This can be done via Tools->Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer->Settings. Once done, players will have to restart Steam and the mod should be ready for play.

Have fun!