After a six-year break, a new Garry’s Mod gamemode competition — the GmodStore Gamemode Competition — began on GmodStore on June 1, 2026. This time, the main theme was procedural generation as the central mechanic of the gamemode: random map generation, a dynamic item system, increasingly difficult waves of enemies, and other mechanics that add freedom and unpredictability through procedural scripts.
Registration opened on July 31, participants had to submit a finished gamemode by August 8, the jury reviewed the submitted entries on August 15, and the final rankings were announced on August 16. The competition final was streamed on the GmodStore YouTube channel.
The organizers laid out the competition rules in detail (the meaning of the original wording has been preserved). Teams could consist of any number of participants, but each participant could belong to only one team, and each team could submit no more than one project. The project had to have open source code — it had to be published on GitHub or GitLab and comply with the standard definition of open source, while participants were free to use any publicly available external libraries. Among the base game gamemodes, only “Sandbox” and “Base” were allowed, while there were no restrictions on the use of third-party assets such as maps, models, materials, and so on. The code creation date was also explicitly specified: all code had to be written no earlier than June 1, and using work created before that date was prohibited.
The organizers also clarified GmodStore’s position on AI usage: it was not prohibited as long as it was used “ethically” — although the organizers did not define what exactly that meant. The only mandatory requirement was for participants to describe how AI was used and what exactly it did. AI usage had no effect on the final score.
The total prize pool amounted to $1,758.01 (RUB 151,451.52 and UAH 78,346.70 at the exchange rate on August 29, 2026). For comparison, the prize pool in 2020 was $6,378.99 (RUB 461,342.59 and UAH 171,977.57 at the 2020 exchange rate). The main contribution came from Pivity (GmodStore) itself — $1,000; the fund was also supplemented by HelloSpoke ($234.56), Tom.bat ($123.45), Nykez, Zerochain, and Joshua ($100 each), and Sublime Addons ($100 more), while the remaining amount was collected through community donations of $25 or more.
Six gamemodes reached the competition final: This Dungeon Stinks!, Dungeon, NULL HYPOTHESIS, Nightfall, The Horizon, and Merge Empires. According to the jury’s final results, first place and $1,000 went to This Dungeon Stinks!, second place and $500 went to Nightfall, and third place and $258.01 went to The Horizon.
This Dungeon Stinks! — a four-player co-op roguelike gamemode featuring procedurally generated dungeons. Players must fight alongside their friends and try to escape the Lich and his terrifying dungeon, going deeper and encountering increasingly strong and dangerous enemies. Along the way, they can find the Old Man’s room with a cauldron, where collected ingredients can be used to create entirely new weapons.
Nightfall — a gamemode for up to eight players in which they must defend a base from waves of bugs for 30 minutes. Players earn money for kills, which can be used to purchase ammunition and equipment.
The Horizon — a co-op gamemode with procedural generation designed for repeated playthroughs. The squad travels by boat to an abandoned research campus, searches the surface for a way underground, explores a randomly generated facility, completes expedition objectives, and must escape before the facility collapses.
