FANWORKS
A private server for Disney's Toontown Online and the paradigm for a successful fangame initiative. As of 2025 it has been running for over 11(!) years. TTR has not just retained, but refined the visual style and childlike attitude that made the original game one of a kind. They are the glue that holds together an extremely dedicated underground fan community. Also worth a mention is Toontown Corporate Clash, a spinoff server which fully overhauls just about every aspect of the game.
One of my favorite mods for any game ever... NeiK took a classic but aging and buggy roguelite, Risk of Rain, and fixed almost every major bug, improved performance significantly, and more than tripled the amount of content in the game. Since Starstorm released, an official remake of the original game has been released, unfortunately without the kind of modding support which made Starstorm possible in the first place. As such, I still consider this the definitive way to play the game in terms of breadth of content.
The Pikmin 2 Hacking community is one of the strongest for any Gamecube title. But Pikhacker's full game hacks stand out among the most amazing for pushing the boundaries of what's even possible. Most recently, Pikhacker released Pikmin 1², which is a complete port of Pikmin 1 into the engine of Pikmin 2, involving re-implementing several of the creatures and mechanics unique to the first game, alongside a helping of original content. Check out their work if you are a Dandori addict like me.
This is a crowdsourced fan project documenting assets from thousands of video games. Models, Audio, Sprites, everything you could want from games on every console ever created. Without hyperbole, it is a historic archive, and a very powerful tool for any aspiring video game artist to mull over endless inspiration and guidance.
This is a server emulator for Fusionfall Online, a 2010-era MMO featuring Cartoon Network IPs. One of the unique things about this MMO is that it actually has a questline unlike most kids' MMOs of the era, and it technically can all be completed in singleplayer. There are also some servers that are still hosted if you want to see what it was like with others. There were once much larger Fusionfall fan projects in the works which unfortunately ended up falling victim to scope creep and legal threats.
Starbound is kindof a bad game. Grifting developer Tiyuri created a hype train which whisked away many excited Terraria fans to do countless hours of unpaid work in sprites, concept art, and game design. And after years in development and more content removed than released, it still came out of Early Access with fundamental flaws. Anyway, the game's source code was leaked many years later which finally allowed for a level of control over the game that the usual modding hadn't, the true caretakers of the game now free to liberate it from its neglecting owners. This is the project of OpenStarbound and other offshoot forks of the codebase.
The all-in-one launcher and archive for pretty damn near every webgame you have ever played. If you spent countless hours on NotDoppler and Coolmath in the computer lab like me, this is your MAME.
A long time ago some guy nobody's heard of named Andrew Spinks made a mario fangame. A long time after that a handful of very talented developers took the abandoned gamemaker project and breathed new life into it, turning it from a simple level editor to a full-fledged platformer game engine. If you love classic Mario, this is a great way to spend an afternoon or a few.