Garry’s Mod, more commonly known as GMod, is one of those games that can seem downright confusing the first time you launch it. You load it up, jump into sandbox mode, and suddenly you’re standing alone in a silent map with no clear objective. What are you supposed to do? How does anything work? Why do so many YouTubers seem to have the time of their lives in this game, while you’re just wandering around confused?

This guide is aimed at absolute beginners—people who own Garry’s Mod but haven’t spent much time figuring out what it’s all about. If you’re looking for direction or just want a better understanding of what makes this game so versatile and creative, then read on.

Garry’s Mod: A Game Engine, Not Just a Game

At its core, Garry’s Mod is a sandbox game—literally. There’s no story, no campaign, no win conditions. It’s a physics-based sandbox that gives players the tools to spawn objects, manipulate them, and even build machines, vehicles, and entire scenes. It started as a mod for Half-Life 2, which is why much of the game is based on the Source Engine. And while sandbox mode is the default, GMod goes far beyond that—it’s really more of a platform for custom-made games than a game itself.

When you first launch the game, you’ll be in sandbox mode. This is the blank canvas of GMod. You’re given tools like the physics gun and the tool gun, which allow you to spawn, manipulate, freeze, weld, and pose objects and characters. Pressing the default key Q opens the spawn menu, where you can choose from hundreds of objects—props, NPCs, vehicles, ragdolls—and place them into your world. Once spawned, you can interact with them freely, combining them, adjusting their physics, or freezing them midair for complex scene-building or experimentation.

Enabling Content from Other Source Games

A lot of the fun in Garry’s Mod comes from content that doesn’t even originate in GMod itself. Because it’s built on the Source Engine, it supports importing assets from other Source games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and Portal. These can be enabled from the in-game menu by simply checking boxes next to the titles you have installed. Once enabled, their maps, models, and other resources will be available to you in sandbox and other game modes. This dramatically expands your creative possibilities.

Not all maps from these games are compatible—Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 content, for instance, might not work as expected. But Left 4 Dead 1 and Team Fortress 2 maps are usually accessible, and once loaded, you can begin experimenting with props, ragdolls, and NPCs in those settings.

Sandbox Mode: The Playground of Possibilities

Sandbox mode is where most people start—and where many people get overwhelmed. So what can you actually do here? Well, you can:

• Spawn Props and Characters: Bring in models from other games or the GMod base library, and manipulate them in the world.
• Use the Physics Gun: Pick up and move objects, rotate them, freeze them in space, or combine them.
• Use the Tool Gun: Attach wheels to a platform to build a car, weld items together, create buttons and levers—essentially, you can start engineering in-game machines.
• Face and Body Posing: This is one of the most iconic features of GMod. You can pose characters and adjust facial expressions using the face poser and other utilities in the spawn menu. That’s how people create machinima (in-game movies) and memes.

There’s also a context menu, which you can open with the default key C. This gives you additional options for manipulating objects and customizing your player model. You can set your character to a model from Half-Life, Team Fortress, or other games. You can even change colors or switch to iconic characters like the G-Man.

Building Contraptions and Vehicles

With the construction tools in the spawn menu, you can raise platforms, attach wheels, create moving parts, and tinker with physics settings. Making a functional car, for example, involves spawning a base, attaching wheels, and setting their spin direction. It can take time to figure out how to make things work correctly, but that’s part of the fun—it’s a full sandbox for creativity and experimentation.

Sandbox can be played solo or with others. When starting a game, you can set the number of players and invite friends to join. That way, you can build together, mess around, or even create your own minigames.

Weapons, Physics, and the Gravity Gun

GMod includes weapons from Half-Life 2 and other Source games, so if you’re more into chaos than creation, you can jump into sandbox mode and start a gunfight or blow up the stuff you’ve made. The game also features the iconic gravity gun, letting you lift and hurl objects around with force.

Multiplayer and Game Modes

Here’s where GMod really shines. Beyond the sandbox is a whole universe of game modes, most of which are community-created. You’ll find hundreds of servers running game modes like:

• Trouble in Terrorist Town (TTT): A mystery game where players are innocents, traitors, or detectives. Traitors try to kill everyone, while innocents and detectives try to survive and find out who the traitors are.
• Prop Hunt: Players hide as inanimate objects while others hunt them down. Hugely popular thanks to YouTube videos.
• Deathrun: Runners dodge traps while one player activates them.
• Hide and Seek, Murder, and Zombie Survival: Variations of classic multiplayer themes.
• Dark RP: The most populated game mode, simulating a full roleplaying environment where players can become police, criminals, store owners, and more. Some servers have intricate economies and politics.

Every server can feel like a completely different game, with its own rules, maps, and mechanics. When you join a new server, GMod will automatically download the files you need, but this can take time, especially on slow internet connections.

Workshop and Customization

Customization is the heart of GMod. Through the Steam Workshop, you can download new maps, models, weapons, scripts, and full game modes. Just open the Workshop in your Steam client or directly from the in-game menu. You can add whatever you like to enhance your game—and you can even make your own content if you’re inclined.

The game uses Lua scripting, making it relatively accessible for those who want to try their hand at modding. You can create new game modes, tweak existing ones, or even design your own models and entities. The flexibility here is nearly limitless.

Final Thoughts

Garry’s Mod is more of a platform than a traditional game. It’s an experimental playground, a multiplayer platform, a machinima studio, and a modding engine all rolled into one. Whether you’re building crazy vehicles in sandbox mode, roleplaying in Dark RP, hiding as a teapot in Prop Hunt, or crafting your own game mode, GMod gives you the freedom to do almost anything.

For newcomers, it can be a little daunting, but with just a little exploration, you’ll find a creative world that’s still thriving more than a decade after release. So load it up, press Q, spawn some props, and let your imagination run wild.

If this guide helped you or you’d like to see more beginner tips—or if you want to see someone actually dive into all these modes—let us know. And maybe it’s time you finally gave Garry’s Mod the attention it deserves.