Every year, Curseforge has a contest where modders submit brand new mods that fit with a theme, typically called a "mod jam," similar to the popular "game jams" that happen now and then around the gaming community. The winners were announced this week, and I wanted to shine a spotlight on some of the creativity that modjams can produce.
This year's modjam had a theme titled "The Future". This year had a record-breaking combined prize pool of over $40,000. There were 20 winners in the mods category, each getting $1,000, 5 winners in the datapack category, 5 for resource packs, and 10 for bedrock add-ons. That is an astounding number of high-quality projects, so today I'll just be going over some of the winners of the mods category, focusing on some of my favorites.
The Best of the Best
These 7 winners are my favorite of the bunch. All of them have great new ideas, are well done, and I particularly favor mods that will fit in well with larger modpacks. Most people playing these mods won't be playing them by themselves, so if a mod remains fun and useful while paired with many of the most popular mods available, that's a win in my book.
Welcome Player!
This mod is one of the most unique out of all of them. It adds structures that can trigger a large-scale event where an unstable game show host (what seems to be a robot with a monitor for a head) subjects players to all manner of tests, tasks, and punishments with the possibility of rewards.
It has an interesting audience system. The "audience", some extra-terrestrial crowd watching your every move during the game show, has both an interest level and mood that you can affect by completing tasks. Their mood will change what types of tasks you get, as well as influence random events - anything from "sad rain" to having to fight a massive robot with an explosive energy cannon. I played for over an hour and I'm sure I didn't see half of the possible events.
The possible loot is just as cool. You can get things like laser swords, teleporters, tesla cannons, bounce pads, seismic launchers and much more. Plus there are TONS of decorative futuristic blocks to use.
This fits in well with any large modpack. Even if some of the items would be eclipsed by alternatives from other tech mods, the experience of competing with friends in a game show can fit very nicely with tons of modpacks.
Star Wars Expansion
This one is huge. I won't be able to go over all of the features, but rest assured, they are extensive. The whole mod revolves around exploring Star Wars planets and crafting and using Star Wars technology.
You start by finding a crashed escape pod in the overworld. Once repaired, you can use it to travel to several different star wars planets. Included in this beta version of the mod are Tatooine and Hoth, with Kashyyyk and Endor not yet implemented. You can find unique villages and other structures on each planet. You can also trade with villagers for various materials and items. The villages themselves are nicely made and themed appropriately.
The items are the second-best part of this mod. You can get a large variety of vehicles, including full spaceships. Right now the escape pod, TIE fighter, and X-Wing are the only space-faring vehicles, but there are a few ground vehicles as well and more will be added. There are several weapons as well. Of course, lightsabers are the fan favorite and you can forge your own in the Jedi temple. (Note: I could not actually find a Jedi temple to do this in my time playing.)
This mod should fit in nicely with several modpacks, especially packs heavy on exploration. I hope to see much more content added to this one in the future. If it gets enough love, I could see entire large modpacks built around it.
Dyson Cube Project
This one is a bit smaller than the last two, which isn't a bad thing. Even the tiniest of mods can be fantastic with the right features, implementation, and especially, the ability to slot into existing modpack progression and feature sets.
The idea here is that you can build your own Dyson Sphere around the overworld's sun. It's very simple. You create one or more EM Railguns, power them, and solar sails and beams to the sun. You can then harvest power (FE) using ray receivers. And that's it! You can send millions of solar sails and beams before the full structure is completed. However, you can harvest energy when only a few are up there. At the maximum, this mod can generate 1 billion FE per tick, which is insane.
This mod is designed to be used with larger modpacks. It doesn't generate its own energy or have its own extensive crafting line or machines. Just the required machines to send items to the sun and harvest the energy. In fact, this mod is already in All the Mods 10.
Vista
This one is another small mod. The main function is to monitor areas of your world using cameras.
It only adds a few items - a camera (called a viewfinder), a television, and a few cassettes. The main type, the Hollow Cassette, can be linked to a camera and inserted into a TV to view the live feed from the camera. You can angle the camera in different directions as well.
The other type of cassette is found in loot and plays an animated image, different for each cassette. These are neat and novel, but don't serve a purpose other than looking cool.
This is almost identical to the security camera from one of my favorite mods, SecurityCraft, but with fewer steps and you don't have to add the rest of the mod to get this functionality.
One thing I'm not sure about is how this ties into the "Future" theme when CRT televisions and cassettes are the core of the mod, instead of wireless cameras, LCDs, and maybe quantum communication chips or something like that. Either way, it's a very nice addition to any modpack.
Cyborg Robot Chicken: Returns!
Remember in the Legend of Zelda when you would strike some chickens and an army of chickens would appear out of nowhere to annihilate you? Well, this mod is just like that, except instead of an army of chickens, you have a time-traveling cyborg chicken coming to exact revenge on you.
When you kill a baby chicken with this mod installed, you will get a notoriety level. This will cause robot chickens to hunt you down. The more you kill, and the higher your notoriety, the stronger the robot chicken hunters will get. Slaying these hunters will drop rewards - mostly implants that you can apply to yourself to get different buffs or abilities.
You can also craft a device to open a portal to the future, where you can fight the Big Bad of the chicken timeline, piloting a huge mech, aided by an army of cyborg chickens. For now that's all that is in this mod, but in the future there will be a usable chicken mech, more implants, and an entire chicken timeline dimension where you can explore the cyborg chicken society.
This mod is quite small content-wise, doesn't provide much use to other mods, but is so silly and fun that it is one of my favorites. It also doesn't try to duplicate content. It simply inserts itself into your gameplay if you try to kill baby chickens, adding a fun new random series of events to an otherwise unrelated playthrough of your favorite modpacks.
Anabasis: Exo Ascension
This one is quite fun, and I can see it being integrated into all sorts of high-tech modpacks.
In this mod, redstone causes "redstone pollution". The more redstone you use, and the larger and more complex your contraptions get, the more pollution is released. Once your technological hubris becomes great enough, you are invaded by machines built to "punish the excess of human innovation." There are 7 stages of invasion, with a massive final boss fight.
And that's it! Not to say that what's here isn't substantial though. The mobs are unique, well-made and very fun to kill, and the boss fight is, in my opinion, up there in the top tier with classics like the Gaia Guardian and Chaos Dragon. It even has 2 fully original songs. The mod author states more will be added as well, possibly past the final boss, which I'm very excited for.
Standalone boss fights like this are so much fun in progression-based tech modpacks. Pack authors with enough effort can change what triggers them, change what drops, change the lethality of the mobs and boss, and insert them into the progression exactly where they are best utilized. Plus, adding a custom song to a bossfight is one of the coolest things any mod can do.
The Future
This ModJam was a great one, and produced some of the coolest stuff I've seen in years. Most, if not all, of these mods are in an unfinished state, but show incredible promise. I will be watching them closely to see how they grow and how they are integrated into modpacks. As is the sentiment with every Curseforge ModJam, The Future looks bright for the modding community.
If you want to try out some of these mods, or do what I did and make a server with most of the winners in a single modpack, consider getting a server with Akliz! It's easy to spin up a blank server, throw in the mods, and get playing.