GMod Tower was a large addon for Garry's Mod of a social gaming lobby that has multiplayer games alongside a main lobby which is the titular tower itself. Players earn the currency, GMC, via the games to buy avatars, accessories, furniture for their suites and other items that are there for fun in the lobby or for use in some of the games, there is also a casino that players can gamble in, an arcade where players can play various flash games on arcade machines and a few other games, a pool that players can relax at and a cinema that players can request and view YouTube. The website can be found here
and can be downloaded via Steam Workshop.
GMod Tower was discontinued on April 8th, 2016 as the developers focused on their new game and successor to GMod Tower, Tower Unite which is built in Unreal Engine 4, allowing for features and abilities that Source didn't allow due to its limits (larger maps, better Character Customization, easier content updates etc.). The game was funded on Indiegogo and is currently on Steam Early Access here for $19.
Only one official GMod Tower server remains in the form of GMTower: Reunion. However, it is slated to only remain up while Tower Unite is in Early Access.
The Multiplayer games in GMod Tower are:
- PVP Battle: A simple First-Person Shooter deathmatch at the classic end of the Fackler Scale of FPS Realism, players fight for 2 minutes with the winner being the one with the most kills and the game lasts for six rounds before being sent back to the lobby. Outside of the game, players can buy weapons for the game and choose what they go into the game with.
- Ball Race: Like Super Monkey Ball, players navigate a course in a ball toward a goal, collecting bananas along the way to increase the payout of GMC. The game lasts an entire themed world of levels with a bonus round in the middle. Outside of the game, players can purchase differently shaped balls to roll around in.
- Virus: Inspired by a similar gamemode in TimeSplitters 2, players start off with a random assortment of weapons and a player is chosen at random to be infected and has to infect other players, either infecting all players in the game or surviving until time runs out. A game lasts for ten rounds.
- The Ultimate Chimera Hunt: Players either play as the pig-masks that have to de-activate The Ultimate Chimera while the Chimera itself has to chomp all of the pig-masks to win. A game lasts for ten rounds
- Zombie Massacre: A top-down arcade style zombie survival game, the objective being survival, campaign or boss battle. Players choose from a variety of classes that utilize various abilities. The game lasts for six days (rounds) with a boss on the final day.
- Minigolf: Exactly What It Says on the Tin, just putt a ball into a hole on/under the number of strokes to score the lowest possible. The game runs through a whole eighteen holes.
- Source Karts: Wacky Racing in a Mario Kart style with similar play style and power-ups. The game lasts through three different tracks before two battle games at the end.
Tropes that pertain to GMod Tower are:
- Achievement System: The game has an internal, non-Steam award system for each player, that include achievements for both the lobby and the gamemodes. All reward a sum of 500 GMC when completed, some include a trophy that can be placed in your suite. There are also milestone achievements that reward special items that can be used in the lobby and relate to the game in question.
- Anachronism Stew: The final boss of the Gasoline map in Zombie Masscare is a T-Rex. Then again, in a collection of games that feature characters from Razputin to Faith Connors slaying hordes of zombies, this doesn't feel too out-of-place.
- Bag of Holding: The backpack sold by the wandering merchant allows access to your chest/vault at anytime, effectively increasing your storage space.
- Betting Mini-Game: The Casino in which you can waste a lot of GMC on the slot machines, video poker, prize wheels and both five-card draw and Texas Hold 'Em variants of poker.
- Blatant Lies: The wandering merchant does not wander around. Subverted as of Lobby 2 in which he does wander around.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: subverted, as there are donor bonuses but otherwise you can earn and buy the grand majority of items without spending a real penny.
- Averted entirely in the upcoming Tower Unite. Once you buy the game, that's it.
- Camera Perspective Switch: Players can switch between third and first person in the lobby. Zombie Massacre is always top-down. Source Karts allows you to go from third to first person perspective.
- Catastrophic Countdown: The fate, In-Universe, of the first lobby map when it was shut down.
- Chainsaw Good: The chainsaw in PVP Battle which can be thrown and then explodes. Zombie Massacre also features a chainsaw.
- Drunk Driver: Source Karts allows you to drop a keg of beer on the road, running into it messes with your viewpoint and blurs your vision.
- Energy Weapon: The plasma auto-rifle and sci-fi pistol in Virus fire lasers. It also shows up as a random power up in Source Karts. The phaser in Zombie Massacre also shoots green lasers
- Green Hill Zone: Various gamemodes typically have a map that appeals to newer players.
- Grid Inventory: Of the one-space-fits-all category that holds one of any item.
- Guns Akimbo: A purchasable weapon for PVP Battle as the more unique variant of using both mouse buttons for both weapons. Ammo isn't tracked for both weapons for the sake of preventing frustration.
- An Interior Designer Is You: You can buy furniture items for your suite and place them wherever you want and in any direction you wish, even on the walls (granted that's for placing posters but still...)
- Joke Item: The squeaky hammer in PVP Battle, unless you figure out it's hidden ability.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: There is a ridiculous amount of Video Game and other media characters you can choose as your player model aside from the obvious Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, etc.
- Mini-Game: It's debatable if the multiplayer gamemodes are mini games or just games in their own right. There are several true Mini-Games that happen in the plaza such as snowball fights or being challenged to perform duels with others for GMC.
- Pinball Projectile: The Raging Bull in PVP Battle fires bullets that richochet, making it unexpectedly deadly in tight spaces.
- The Flak Gun in Virus fires six glowing flechettes that bounce around, making it great at taking down groups of infected but it only has three shots.
- Racing Minigame: Source Karts
- Shotguns Are Just Better: The Super Shotty in PVP Battle, which can be swapped out for a SPAS-12 that has a tighter choke but has to be manually pumped every shot and reload. The shotguns in Zombie Massacre are also pretty practical against big groups. The Sonic Shotgun in Virus has an unrelated Secondary Fire that pushes the infected away and it's semi-automatic, only downside being it cannot reload until it's empty (rather like Marathon), an alternative weapon you can spawn with is the double barrel shotgun that works effectively.
- Sizeshifter: Potions can be purchased from vending machines that change a player's size in the lobby, donors have access to tiny (10% size) and giant (150% size) potions.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: PVP Battle plays a tense piece during the last fifteen seconds of a round. Virus has a piece play when there's one remaining survivor.
- Sound-Effect Bleep: "Fuck" is always replaced by "hug" in any of the games, this can result in a rather amusing situation of somebody requesting to be hugged when they mess up something.
- The Virus: Virus gamemode, players survive against a single player who attempts to spread the infection.
- Virtual Paper Doll: You can choose between Garry's Mod's default player models or buy custom ones in the game alongside purchasing hats and facial accessories such as masks or glasses. This can result in rather interesting situations such as a Jawa running around with a Cubone skull or Mega Man Volnutt wearing Majora's Mask.
- Weak Turret Gun: Electricians can deploy these in Zombie Massacre.
- Zip Mode: The maps in the newly revised lobby allow players to teleport to major locations.
