Gunman Contracts Alyx Mod: Chapters 1-2 and How to Install

The two chapters

Both were made by ANB_Seth in Half-Life: Alyx’s own Source 2 tools and last updated on March 23, 2022. Chapter 1 is about 636 MB and Chapter 2 about 1.3 GB. They are still free and still work.

The Extraction introduces the unknown gun-for-hire, sent to find and extract a missing woman believed to be in the hands of human traffickers. Art of War brings him back against a much larger trafficking operation and the man behind it, Aaron Vask, with a shootout through a private art gallery.

How to install them

1. Own Half-Life: Alyx on Steam.
2. Open the Half-Life: Alyx Workshop from your Steam library. The two chapters sit near the top of Most Subscribed; open each and click Subscribe. Wait for the downloads to finish.
3. Launch Half-Life: Alyx and open Add-ons. Enable only one chapter at a time: enabling both causes file conflicts.
4. Choose New Game, pick a save slot, switch from Original Game to Add-on Maps, and select the Gunman chapter you enabled.
5. Set your preferences (left-handed mode included) and start the game with add-ons.

Troubleshooting

• The chapter will not load or the menu is empty. Players who have never started Half-Life: Alyx itself report the add-on list staying empty. Create a save slot in the base game first, quit to the menu, then repeat the steps above.
• Left-handed players. The maps use a custom pistol with no left-handed support. Subscribe to a pistol-replacement mod that supports it and enable it after the chapter in Add-ons; each chapter ships its own pistol replacement, which overwrites anything enabled before it.
• Both chapters enabled. Turn one off. Conflicts are the usual reason a chapter fails to enable.

Inside the mods

The mods already had the ideas Stand Alone builds on: a briefing before each contract, easy, normal and hard difficulty you can change on the fly from the options, unlimited spare magazines in your backpack, and a Last Stand survival mode where you hold a circle against waves with a choice of zones.

What Stand Alone changes

• It is a new game, not a port. The developer left the Alyx Workshop tools and rebuilt it from scratch in Unity, and you no longer need Half-Life: Alyx.
• An arsenal instead of one pistol. Gamertag VR points out the mods gave you a pistol; Stand Alone has 18 guns to unlock, a compound bow and knives.
• A home base. The Hive replaces the mods’ shooting range.
• A flat-screen mode. Stand Alone also plays without VR and on Steam Deck.
• The same world. In War-House, Boris Vadim greets the Gunman as the man who took down Vask, a direct callback to Chapter 2.

Downloads of “the mod” from anywhere other than the Steam Workshop are unofficial; the Workshop pages are the only source ANB_Seth publishes.