6 Mind-Blowing Details and Community Creations in Half-Life: Alyx

May 5, 2020

After the huge interest you showed in our previous Alyx post, we felt obligated to give you another humble collection. This time it’s our favorite Half-Life: Alyx in-game details and a few Community Creations, utilizing them at their full potential.


1. ‘Quarantine Dominos’

Since the global lockdown is still a pretty hot topic, we’d love to start with ‘Quarantine Dominos’ by reddit user ‘shockthree’. As you’ll see multiple times below (if you haven’t seen in-game for yourself already), Alyx’s physics are mind-blowing, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that people with a little time on their (VR) hands can use this to their advantage and create captivating mini-events.



2. The Piano

So, there is a random piano just sitting in an in-game hotel, minding its own business. Everyone feels compelled to touch it and see if it’s functional though. And, as expected, it does! It operates pretty much like a real piano! Needless to say, this called for some talent shows and here is a fun compilation of several of them:


Our favorite YouTube comment on this is by user ‘Dj Newton123’ and says: “Fun Fact: In Half Life Alyx Piano Simulator there is apparently an entire game filled with headcrabs, but no one has played it yet, because of the awesomeness that is this piano.”



3. Marker Art

There are several places in the game where you can unleash your creative genius for visual arts. We won’t even touch on the adorable Portal turret graffiti, embedded on two random walls by Valve themselves, but we’ll turn our heads to players’ talents once again. By using a marker or a crayon you can create witty illustrations or… teach a math lesson. The latter became a pretty popular video a bit after the title’s launch, but it remains one of the our favorites to this day:


4. Cone Flipping

We mentioned the physics, so we won’t go into full praise mode again, but here’s another example of what can be done thanks to them. You know the bottle flipping challenges, right? Well, reddit user ‘Maxzzzie’ presents the amazing game of road cone flipping!


5. The Neighbor’s Lost Cat

Near the beginning of the game you may notice a note with a cat photo saying Beatrice - the neighbor’s cat - is missing. A bit later, while on a balcony, you can not only see the cat lying on a lower-level balcony chair, but you can throw a tin can at it and scare it away. There a few more in-game appearances of a cat that the community suspects is this pesky runaway again:


6. Adventures of Alyx and Headcrab

We admit - this one touched us. Words are obsolete, so we just leave you with the romantic journey of Alyx and Headcrab: