Game of Mods is out in Early Access, and it's for builders first
As of September 15, Game of Mods is for sale on Steam. This post is for everyone who wishlisted or followed while the page said "coming soon", and it's honest about one thing up front: Early Access is here for the people who want to make things. If you draw avatars, write characters, or build small worlds, this is your invitation. If you just want to play, you're welcome too, and the library grows every time a builder ships.
What you can build, today
Characters. Give someone a personality, a voice, what they know, and what they refuse to talk about. Then walk up and talk to them. They answer out loud, in that voice, and stay who you made them. The words are generated on your Mac by a model that ships inside the game, so a character you write tonight talks tonight. No cloud, no account, no key to paste in.
Avatars. Import a VRM 1.0 avatar and it walks, looks at you, and moves its mouth when it speaks. If you make avatars in VRoid Studio or any tool that exports VRM, they work here as characters or as your own player body. The license embedded in the file is checked before a mod can ship, so your terms travel with your work.
Stories. A journey is a short authored story: scenes, cinematic shots, and beats that react to what the player does and says, with characters who have their own goals. The editor is in the game.
Spaces. The places journeys happen in. Bring a GLB and it's a set.
Everything is data: JSON plus VRM and GLB. There's no scripting engine, so a mod can't run code on anyone's machine, and yours can't be broken by someone else's. Publish to Steam Workshop from inside the game. A validation pass catches broken bundles before anything uploads. Browsing and subscribing work in the game too.
What it's like to play
It plays by voice from the front door in. The menus listen. A narrator walks you through your first five minutes without a line of text to read, and a character named Wren waits on the road to be talked to. Every voice path has a typed twin, so a keyboard alone gets you everywhere. It speaks English, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese, and characters answer in the one you chose.
Where it honestly stands
Characters, voice, and the building tools are where the effort has gone, and they're what we'd ask you to judge. Environments are simple. The built-in story is a five-minute tutorial; the rest live on the Workshop, where they can be updated without a game patch. Characters can ramble, and sometimes they're wrong about things.
It runs on Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 26, and it's built to fit an 8 GB M1. 16 GB is the comfortable choice. Intel Macs aren't supported.
What Early Access means here
About six months, if builder feedback lets us keep to that. We leave when the tools feel complete and the Workshop has enough in it to learn from. The features that ship will be the ones builders ask for, so ask. Between now and then, expect deeper character behavior, more beat types and camera control in the story editor, more voice and narration, and better ways to find what other people made.
The Early Access price is lower than 1.0 will be. Buy now and 1.0 is yours at no extra cost. Early buyers are the builders shaping this with us, and the price says so.
How to start
Play First Steps. Talk to Wren. Then open Studio and make one character; it takes about as long as reading this post. Publish it, and tell us on the discussions board what got in your way. Every report is read by the person who wrote the code, and the good mods get pointed at.
Thank you for being here this early. It's a better game with you building in it.