LastWords

LastWords is a tiny, client-only Fabric mod that swaps out the giant “You Died!” headline on the vanilla death screen for a custom message picked at random from a list you control. Make every wipe a little more personal — or a little more annoying for your friends watching the stream.

Features

• Custom death title. Whenever the death screen opens, the big red headline is replaced with a random line from your config.
• Random pool. Provide as many messages as you want; the mod picks one uniformly at random per death.
• Vanilla fallback. If your message list is empty or the file is missing, the mod silently falls back to the vanilla “You Died!”.
• Zero setup. On first launch the mod writes a default config/lastwords.json with ten sample lines so you can see it work immediately, then edit them later.
• Client-only. Works on any server — singleplayer or multiplayer. No server install needed, no game rules touched.

Configuration

Edit config/lastwords.json:

{
  "messages": [
    "GAME OVER",
    "You blinked.",
    "Skill issue.",
    "Press F to respawn.",
    "Maybe next time.",
    "That was avoidable.",
    "Gravity wins.",
    "RIP.",
    "Better luck next life.",
    "Oof."
  ]
}

Add, remove, or replace lines freely. Each entry is plain text. The list is loaded once at game start; reload the game after edits to pick up changes.

How it works

A single Mixin intercepts the super(Text) call in DeathScreen‘s constructor and substitutes a random message from your config in place of the vanilla title. The death cause line (“Player was killed by …”) below the title is untouched.

Cross-version

Tested on 1.21.8, 1.21.9, 1.21.10, 1.21.11. One JAR, one install.