The original Half-Life. A genre-changer to some, a revolutionary game outright to others. Half-Life’s classic Sci-Fi plot and fast-paced shooting combat won the hearts of many back in 1998, and it continues to do so to this day. The fact that it couldn’t be played with friends on release, though, left many gamers wanting co-op action. In 1999, Daniel “Sven Viking” Fearon and a team of intrepid Half-Life players launched a mod for Half-Life titled Sven Co-op to quench that thirst, which featured cooperative play for the base Half-Life adventure. 17 years and many, many iterations and spin-offs later, Sven Co-op is finally releasing on Steam for free.

This latest version – Sven Co-op 5.0 – comes with an SDK (software development kit) and a dedicated server, which can be accessed under the Tools tab in your Steam library after downloading the game. Those interested in running their own server can check out this guide here. If you want to know more about playing the game in general, you can read the Sven manual here.

To celebrate the release, the Sven team flaunted their commitment to the project throughout the gaming ages by hosting a virtual party on their Gamesurge IRC channel.

Valve gave the Sven team permission to publish their project on Steam as a standalone game back in 2013, so they have been hard at work since then to bring Sven Co-op to the larger public.

In its original form, Sven Co-op closely adhered to the Half-Life story mode upon which it was based, with modifications to enemy toughness and puzzles that were more appropriate to cooperative play. Since then, it has spawned countless variations and mods, each with their own take on Valve’s timeless classic.

Sven Co-op‘s levels are set as missions and are generally separate from each other. Many missions span several maps and some are collected together in a series. The aim of most levels is to reach the end or to achieve an objective — obtaining a high score is not essential to beat a level, it’s just part of the fun.

The game aims to provide a new perspective on the Half-Life experience, and invites players to put their own spin on one of the genre’s most revered titles with mods and new gameplay experiences.

If you’re interested in experiencing Half-Life in an all-new light, you can do so by downloading Sven Co-op for free from this page. You can visit its official website here.