Bouncy rockets are so much “fun”, easy to implement, and obvious to think of that I’m surprised more games haven’t had them.

that’s why mods were so magical, especially in multiplayer games! Rocket Crowbar was one of my favorites for half-life — it turned the crowbar impact hitscan into a rocket projectile, which usually killed whoever you hit, the players next to them, and (depending on the whims of the goldsrc engine) probably you too. then from that thoroughly goofy premise they just kept going — there was a shotgun that launched exploding scientists, the grenades opened black holes… here’s an old review of the mod on Planet Half-life of all things if you want a very specific type of nostalgia

nothing else has the manic energy of a modder just doing free jazz with a game engine!

I was never really good at level design but I thought the process of building 3D worlds in an editor and then pressing a button to bake in the light and shadows was super beautiful.

the way that old Quake-based BSP engines pre-rendered their lighting and shadows was beautiful! I’m surprised more map makers didn’t play with customized versions of the renderer to get special effects, since I think it was effectively a texture map that shipped with the map file