This mod turns Skyrim into a tropical rainforest

There are countless Skyrim mods that make Skyrim even colder and harsher than it already is, but Project Rainforest, a Special Edition mod, does the opposite. Snowy tundras turn to tropical grasslands, frozen lakes to warm swamps, and icicles to lily pads. 

It changes the whole of Skyrim, Fort Dawnguard, Falmer Valley, and parts of Solstheim from the Dragonborn DLC. You'll need all of the game's DLCs installed to run it. Cave interiors are now green and temperate, and creator sa547 has gone to a lot of effort to tweak weather effects, swapping snow for rain storms, and adding tropical climates in certain areas.

They've also tweaked game sounds so that you will no longer hear rushing winds coming up from the south—instead, you'll get ambient jungle noises. Skaal villagers in the coldest reaches of Skyrim will now wear light clothing instead of the layered, heavy furs from the base game.

Creator sa647 says that a version of the mod that works with Skyrim Special Edition will be coming "soon".

Judging from the 60+ screens on its Nexus Mods page, along with the comments from players, sa547 has done a good job adding tons of detail without affecting performance drastically. They've also included in-depth installation and compatibility instructions to make sure you can get it going—that's on the mod's main page.

As the comments below point out, there is already a long-standing tropical overhaul mod for Skyrim—if you're interested, I'd have a look at the screenshots of both and take your pick.

Here's a fly through of the Project Rainforest-modified world:

Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.