Project Parasites

Project Parasites is a survival horror mod for Fabric 1.21.1. A meteor lands near you and leaves a core that corrupts the terrain. The air becomes toxic, parasites start appearing, and the outbreak grows harder to contain.

The mod is inspired by Scape and Run: Parasites. I made the code, models, textures, animations, and sounds for this project myself.

Choosing a difficulty

Choose Normal or Extreme when you first enter a world. The choice is locked afterward. On a server, the first player to join chooses for everyone.

Normal gives you more time to respond, with weaker enemies and faster infection recovery. Extreme adds enemies that learn your tactics, break blocks, and spawn more enemies after deaths.

Corruption and infection

The outbreak progresses in phases. First the terrain changes and the air becomes toxic without hazmat protection. Stronger parasites and outbreaks follow, then hive structures and bosses. Corruption continues while you are away from the area.

Attacks and toxic air build your infection level. Symptoms progress from nausea to slowness, then hunger and weakness, and finally wither damage and blindness. Antidotes and hazmat armor help you manage it.

Creatures

• Crawlers climb walls and attack in groups. Spitters leave acid pools, Lurkers hide and ambush, and Swoopers attack from the air.
• Stalkers flank you and freeze when watched. Broodmothers spawn smaller parasites, while Infectors turn vanilla mobs against you.
• The Hivemind strengthens nearby parasites and uses coordinated slam attacks. The larger Leviathan is immune to fire.

Zombies, cows, villagers, and other vanilla mobs can become infected. Iron golems are protected in Normal mode.

On Extreme, parasites respond to your fighting habits. Frequent bow use makes them zigzag and close in faster; fighting underground increases cave spawns; fire use builds their resistance. They also organize into swarms with assigned roles. Normal disables these behaviors.

Equipment

Early tools include Warding Torches for safe zones, Antidote Potions, and the Noise Dampener. Later, you can use the Parasite Scanner HUD, Flamethrower, Decoy Blocks, Immunity Serum, and Hazmat Armor with 80% infection resistance.

Late-game equipment includes the boss-dropped Parasite Bane Sword, Hive Destroyer, Purification Beacon, and Corruption Purifier, which shuts down meteor cores.

Events

The first meteor is scheduled at five minutes, or ten in Normal, with more arriving afterward. Blood moons bring a red sky, faster corruption, and more spawns. Outbreaks send waves of parasites through heavily corrupted areas.

Configuration

Edit config/projectparasites.json to adjust corruption speed, spawns, and difficulty settings, or disable individual creatures. Server admins can use /parasites commands for testing and management.

If you try it, leave a comment about how your world holds up.

PROJECT PARASITES

Something fell from the sky. It wasn't a normal meteor.

Fabric 1.21.1

About

A meteor crashes near you. It plants a core that starts corrupting everything around it. The corruption spreads, the air turns toxic, and alien creatures start crawling out. They hunt in packs, they learn how you fight, and they get worse over time.

This is my biggest project to date, months of work building every system from scratch. Inspired by Scape and Run: Parasites, but all code, models, textures, animations, and sounds are entirely my own original work.

Choose your difficulty

First time you load into a world, you pick one of two modes. Can't change it after.

Normal — A fair fight. Slower corruption, fewer parasites, no adaptive AI, no block-breaking enemies, weaker hordes. You can actually win this one.

Extreme — No mercy. How the mod was meant to be played. Adaptive AI learns your tactics, parasites smash through walls, deaths spawn more enemies, and everything can be infected. For veterans.

On a server, the first player to join makes the call for everyone.

What changes between modes

How it works

Corruption spreads from the meteor in four phases. The longer you ignore it, the worse it gets.

Phase 1 — Terrain starts changing. Air becomes toxic without hazmat gear.

Phase 2 — Stronger parasites show up. Outbreaks start happening.

Phase 3 — Hive structures grow. Bosses appear. Good luck.

It spreads even while you're away. Come back later and the whole area might be gone.

The creatures

─── Tier 1 · The swarm ───

─── Tier 2 · The hunters ───

─── Tier 3 · The bosses ───

Vanilla mobs can get infected too. Zombies, cows, villagers, iron golems — they all turn parasitic eventually.

They adapt to you

Use a bow too much? They zigzag and close distance faster.

Fight underground? More of them spawn in caves.

Use fire? They build resistance to it.

They also form coordinated swarms with assigned roles instead of just rushing you one by one.

(Only on Extreme. Normal mode turns all of this off.)

Your tools

Infection

Getting hit or breathing bad air builds infection. It gets worse in stages — nausea, then slowness, then hunger and weakness, then wither damage and blindness. Hazmat armor and antidotes keep you alive.

World events

Config

Everything is configurable — corruption speed, spawn rates, difficulty, and you can turn individual creatures on or off. Config file is at config/projectparasites.json.

Server admins get /parasites commands for testing and management.

This took me months to build and it's by far the biggest mod I've made.
If you try it out, let me know how it goes. I'd like to hear what kills you first.