Engalus mod was created by Brian J. Audette (dakushna) in the early 2000s as his game design portfolio. The mod is based on the first part of the second act of Crytek's canceled game Engalus. You play as Jordain, a top-notch assassin for the human Homeworld's government, who has been sent to a remote research station Jord'Han, controlled by the radical upstarts known as the Invisible. It won't all be guns and glory though as Jordain uncovers a devious plot surrounding an ancient alien artifact known only as Engalus.

The mod begins with a huge exposition dump, where Jordain records an audio log about his mission, what he has done, and how he fled to his apartment after causing chaos at the station while trying to investigate all the events involving The Blades and The Invisible factions. Your task now is to enter the VIP apartment of your now-dead friend, who previously betrayed you.

After the cutscene, you wake up and one of the JSI guards asks you to open the door and follow him for interrogation. You can either kill him or follow him. If you convince Chief Addams that you had nothing to do with the explosion, he will let you go, and the guards will be neutral towards you. If you fail the interrogation, you will have to escape from your prison cell and sneak past the enemy guards. After that, you will have to find a way to get into the VIP apartments, and there are several ways to do this, which I will not spoil. Mod is short and ends rapidly, unfortunately

The mod consists mainly of reused Deus Ex assets, as well as Engalus tech demo and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen. Surprisingly, for such an old Deus Ex mod, it is fully voiced by the dev himself (and one of his friends, who voices the female NPCs). As for the voice acting, it's good, it doesn't sound terrible or incredibly cheesy (except maybe for Chief Addams).

The gameplay consists of wandering around the station and talking to NPCs. Or sneaking past/shooting if you failed the interrogation. The mod doesn't add anything new to the game; all the weapons, NPC models, and so on are still from Deus Ex. I can't say much about the plot, as the mod is unfinished, but it certainly sounded promising.

Many things from the Engalus design document had to be changed to fit Deus Ex, and the perception of the game itself was different. The story design document states that Engalus is “Half-Life meets Metal Gear Solid in an intense story driven action/adventure game like none other on the PC”, while the tech demo's interface was clearly inspired by Deus Ex, and the build was compiled some time after Deus Ex was released, so I think they took inspiration from DX. And that's probably why Engalus was canceled in favor of X-Isle (which is nowadays known as Far Cry), as the studio's goal was to create a story-driven blockbuster with good graphics, rather than an immersive sim/RPG.

While reading the design document, I made several notes, for example, about the differences between the document and the mod (the design document mentioned dragons, which are literally Greasels from Deus Ex) and about what diidn't made the cut (for example, an area similar to G.U.T.S. in Prey (2017), or combat in low gravity, as in Crysis).

Additionally, a fan-made update is in development that should fix some bugs, give NPCs a more unique look that I've assembled using other Deus Ex textures and suggested to the author (instead of reusing old NPCs from Deus Ex), and add a proper ending to the mod where you have to escape from the VIP suite to the docks, but unfortunately, I haven't heard any recent news about it.