How to Install Mods In Boneworks (2026)

A full guide on how to download and install mods in Boneworks including using mod managers like Thunderstore.

September 20, 20268 min readUpdated September 20, 2026

A guide on how to download and install mods in BONEWORKS on PC.

BONEWORKS is a VR-only physics sandbox built in Unity, and its mods are loaded by MelonLoader rather than BepInEx. That is the main thing that makes it different from most of the Unity games people mod. Everything lives on Thunderstore.

Our worked example is Custom Maps, a map loader that lets you drop community-made levels into the game. It needs two other mods to work, which makes it a useful demonstration of how the stack fits together.

Requirements

A PC running Windows 10 or later. Linux through Proton works with an extra environment variable, covered below.
BONEWORKS on Steam, plus a VR headset and its runtime. There is no flatscreen mode.
Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable, 64 bit. MelonLoader needs it.
.NET Desktop Runtime 6.0, x64. BONEWORKS is an Il2Cpp game and MelonLoader requires this for those.
A few hundred MB free, more if you are collecting custom maps.

BONEWORKS is single player with no anti-cheat. Nothing here puts your account at risk.

MelonLoader, Not BepInEx

If you have modded Lethal Company, Valheim or most other Unity games, you have used BepInEx. BONEWORKS does not use it.

MelonLoader is a different universal Unity mod loader, built by LavaGang, with first-class support for Il2Cpp games like this one. It works on the same principle: it hooks the game at launch and loads mods, but the folder layout and the installer are its own.

MelonLoader mods are .dll files that go in a Mods folder in the game directory, not BepInEx/plugins.

ModThatIsNotMod

Almost every BONEWORKS mod you will actually want depends on ModThatIsNotMod by gnonme. It is the shared library for this game: it handles loading custom items, gives mod authors helpers for the game's systems, and is the thing the rest of the ecosystem is built against.

Custom Maps needs it, along with FieldInjection. So the full stack for our example is:

MelonLoader  ->  ModThatIsNotMod + FieldInjection  ->  Custom Maps

A mod manager works all of that out for you.

A Word About BONELAB Mods

BONEWORKS and BONELAB are separate games with separate Thunderstore communities, and some packages are listed under both. That cross-listing is not always meaningful.

Hitmarkers is the one people run into most. It appears in the BONEWORKS listings, but every published version of it depends on BoneLib, which is a BONELAB library with no BONEWORKS equivalent, and its own description says it was redone for BONELAB. Installing it here will not do what you want.

The rule of thumb: if a BONEWORKS mod lists ModThatIsNotMod as a dependency, it is genuinely a BONEWORKS mod. If it lists BoneLib, it is a BONELAB mod that happens to be cross-listed.

Installing With Gale

Gale is the easiest route and handles MelonLoader for you.

Download Gale from Thunderstore or GitHub.
Open it and select BONEWORKS.
Let it find your Steam install, or point it at the game folder yourself.
Open Browse mods, search for Custom Maps, and click Install.
MelonLoader, ModThatIsNotMod and FieldInjection are installed alongside it.
Click Launch game (modded).

Launching BONEWORKS from Steam starts it unmodded. Launch from Gale.

Installing With r2modman

r2modman works the same way.

Install r2modman and select BONEWORKS.
Create a profile.
Open Online, search for Custom Maps, and use Download with dependencies.
Click Start modded.

Either is fine. Gale is lighter; r2modman has broader platform support.

Installing MelonLoader Yourself

Worth knowing if you would rather not use a manager, or if a manager is giving you trouble.

First find your game folder. Right-click BONEWORKS in Steam, then Manage and Browse local files:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\BONEWORKS

You are looking for BONEWORKS.exe.

The Automated Installer

This is the recommended way and it is genuinely easy.

Download the MelonLoader Installer.
Run it. It scans for installed Unity games and should list BONEWORKS on its own. If it does not, use Add Game Manually and point it at BONEWORKS.exe.
Click BONEWORKS in the list, pick a version, and hit Install.

WARNING - Leave the nightly builds switch alone. Nightlies are generated from the latest commits and break things regularly. The stable release is what mods are built against.

The Manual Method

Download MelonLoader.x64.zip. BONEWORKS is 64 bit.
Extract the MelonLoader folder from the zip into the BONEWORKS folder.
Extract version.dll from the same zip into the BONEWORKS folder as well.
Launch the game once so MelonLoader generates its folders, then quit.

You should now have a MelonLoader folder, a version.dll and a Mods folder sitting alongside BONEWORKS.exe.

Installing Mods By Hand

With MelonLoader in place, mods are straightforward.

Open the mod's Thunderstore page and click Manual Download.
Extract the zip.
Copy the .dll into the Mods folder in your BONEWORKS directory.

For Custom Maps that means three separate downloads, since you need ModThatIsNotMod and FieldInjection too. Grab each at the version the mod's Dependencies section names, and copy each .dll into Mods.

Some mods ship extra content alongside the .dll, such as map or model files. Read the mod's description for where those go. Custom Maps, for instance, reads map files out of its own folder rather than out of Mods.

NOTE - The manifest.json, icon.png and README.md in a Thunderstore zip are packaging files for the website. They do nothing in the Mods folder.

Installing With The TMC App

Rounding out the list is our own tool. The TMC App is a mod manager and server browser we build, with one-click installs and sandboxes: named mod profiles per game, each with its own load order and deployment method, switchable without re-downloading a thing.

BONEWORKS is not in its supported games list yet. Adding a game is four JSON files and no code, so it is a small job and MelonLoader games are squarely the kind of thing the plugin system is meant to cover.

The honest bit: the app is in very early development. We say so in its README and we are saying so here. A lot of it is only partially tested, so treat it as something to try alongside Gale rather than as a replacement. If you do try it, please tell us what happened, because that is the most useful thing anyone can do for the project right now.

It is open source under GPL-3.0 at github.com/modcommunity/tmc-app. Bugs and feature requests go in the issue tracker, pull requests are welcome, and the repository documents the per-game format if you want to add BONEWORKS support yourself.

Installing it:

Linux: one line, no root and no package manager.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/modcommunity/tmc-app/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Windows: the setup.exe or setup.msi from the releases page. There is a portable build too, though it does not register the launcher entry or the tmc:// link handler.
macOS: the .dmg from the same releases page.

Checking It Worked

MelonLoader opens a console window next to the game on launch. During startup it prints its own version and then a line per mod as it loads them, with the mod name, version and author.

Logs are written to disk too:

BONEWORKS\MelonLoader\Latest.log

That file is the first thing to look at when something does not work, and the first thing anyone helping you will ask for.

For Custom Maps specifically, the mod adds its own way to pick a level in-game once you have map files installed.

Running On Linux

BONEWORKS runs through Proton. MelonLoader needs a DLL override to get loaded, so set the game's Steam launch options to:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%

Note this is version, not winhttp. MelonLoader uses a different hook DLL from BepInEx, and copying the BepInEx launch option across is a common mistake.

The MelonLoader installer also has a Linux build if you would rather not do it by hand. Gale and r2modman both set the override themselves when you launch through them.

Removing Mods

Delete the .dll from the Mods folder, or uninstall it through your mod manager.

To remove MelonLoader entirely, delete the MelonLoader folder, version.dll, the Mods folder and the UserData folder from the game directory. The MelonLoader Installer also has an uninstall option that does this for you.

Steam's Verify integrity of game files will not clean any of this up, because Steam has no record of files it did not install.

Troubleshooting

No console window and no mods. MelonLoader is not loading. Check that version.dll is directly next to BONEWORKS.exe, and that you launched from your mod manager rather than from Steam.

MelonLoader loads but a mod does not. Open MelonLoader\Latest.log. Missing dependencies and version mismatches both show up clearly there.

MelonLoader crashes on startup. Usually a missing prerequisite. Install the VC++ 2015-2019 x64 redistributable and the .NET Desktop Runtime 6.0 x64, which Il2Cpp games need.

A mod installed fine but does nothing at all. Check whether it is actually a BONEWORKS mod. If its dependency list mentions BoneLib, it is a BONELAB mod that happens to be cross-listed.

Everything broke after a game update. BONEWORKS is not updated often these days, but when it is, MelonLoader and the mods both need to catch up. Empty the Mods folder to confirm the game itself is fine, then wait.

VR runtime errors after installing mods. Try launching without mods first to confirm the headset side is working. Mod problems and SteamVR problems look similar from inside a headset.

Conclusion

BONEWORKS modding is simple once you know it is MelonLoader rather than BepInEx, and that ModThatIsNotMod is the library everything else sits on. Install Gale, install the mod you want, and launch through Gale.

The one BONEWORKS-specific trap is cross-listed BONELAB packages. Check the dependency list before you install: ModThatIsNotMod means BONEWORKS, BoneLib means BONELAB.

If you want to help with something, the TMC App is open source and early in development, and feedback on it is worth a great deal to us.