When Behaviour Interactive heard that Devolver was looking for a developer to make a new Serious Sam, we couldn’t have been more excited and we jumped at the opportunity. Many of us on the team had fond memories of playing Serious Sam: The First Encounter when it was released in the early 2000s and remembered the wacky fun the franchise is known for. You know, it came from an era when video games were unapologetically games first, always pushing the limits of what the technology could do. As big fans of Croteam’s work, we simply couldn’t pass it up.
As discussions moved forward, we knew we wanted to make something different, something that would build on the legacy of Serious Sam and honor what came before, while still standing on its own and shining a new light on the franchise. We wanted to create a game that longtime fans would immediately recognize, but that a younger audience with no history with Serious Sam could jump into just as easily. And so, Shatterverse came to be.
Our first task was to recreate the feel of Serious Sam in Unreal Engine, the backpedaling, the gunplay, the classic enemies, and then modernize and redesign those elements. We knew early on that The First Encounter and The Second Encounter would be our biggest inspirations because those are the games we still replay to this day. With the franchise’s 25th anniversary coming up, we wanted the new game to feel like a celebration of where it all began. That meant preserving the high-octane action, the huge enemy waves, and of course, the bosses. Serious Sam has always been known for massive showdowns against impressive baddies, so we wanted every boss to feel like a major set piece and a true test of the players’ might.
At that stage, the game felt good and definitely looked like Serious Sam, but it was still missing something: its own identity. We thought long and hard about why people missed the good old days and what they felt when playing the original games. We wanted to find that feeling again without simply copying what Croteam had already done, and we eventually zeroed in on two design goals. The first was that urge to replay the same mission over and over, hunting for every secret and chasing a higher score. The second was the feeling that anything could happen and that sometimes the deck was stacked against you, (thanks to Croteam’s sometimes cheeky encounter design). As we talked through how to bring those feelings back, the FPS roguelike genre quickly emerged as the perfect fit.
That said, roguelike FPS games can still feel pretty niche and hard to get into, and we wanted Shatterverse to be easy to pick up and share with family and friends, even if they had never touched a Serious Sam game, an FPS, or a roguelike before. Every system needed to be easy to grasp while still offering enough depth to reward mastery. That accessibility also shaped our approach to multiplayer: we wanted a game people could keep playing together for years to come, not one that would disappear from the “digital shelves” if it failed to become a massive success.
To make that possible, we chose peer-to-peer multiplayer instead of relying on dedicated servers and included an offline solo mode, ensuring the game could still be played 5, 10, or even 15 years from now. It was really important to the team to create something that could last and never simply be shut down. We also wanted Shatterverse to launch as a complete, appropriately priced standalone game, one that was worth players’ money from the get-go and didn’t need live-service releases to be fun. At the same time, we had so many ideas for places to visit, old and new enemies and weapons to create, and all the crazy things we could do with Shatterverse. So, we built the game to support expansions, DLC, and new content that could grow the base experience if fans wanted more, without ever cannibalizing the game they had already paid for.
The team has been incredibly excited by the reception across our many beta playtests, and we’ve listened closely to community feedback as we’ve continued to tweak and polish the Shatterverse experience. The Serious Sam community is a dedicated one, and its support has helped us make the game even better through multiple rounds of testing. What makes us proudest is that our core audience seemed to understand immediately what we were trying to do: create a Serious Sam game they could easily share with others, spreading their love of the franchise and helping it reach a new audience. Ultimately, we hope Shatterverse not only welcomes newcomers, but also inspires them to pick up the earlier games and become fans themselves.
We hope you’ll pick up Serious Sam: Shatterverse and assemble a squad to take on Mental’s hordes to save the Samverse!
Serious Sam: Shatterverse
Devolver Digital
$19.99
$17.99
As part of the Serious Program, a multidimensional force opposing Uber Mental, you’ll travel across shifting universes to finish battles other Sams couldn’t. Mental has been hunting the hero across realities, and in many timelines, he’s already won. Now, it’s your turn to push back. To advance, you must bring down his five lieutenants, each a formidable boss in search of total annihilation.
Wield a relentlessly destructive arsenal of devastating weapons, unlock powerful boons, and experiment with run modifiers that reshape gameplay. In true roguelite fashion, death is never the end, and each run opens the door to new strategies and limitless possibilities across the Shatterverse.
MULTIVERSE MAYHEM
Reality cracked and now Serious Sams from multiple universes are fighting the same war. Team up across shifting worlds, collide with alternate versions of the legend, and bring guns-blazing chaos to timelines that were never supposed to meet.
BIG GUNS, SERIOUS DAMAGE
Pack the classics, then crank it into the weird. Wield a mix of iconic Serious Sam staples and brand-new toys, built for one purpose – clearing arenas when Mental’s hordes decide hundreds is a warm-up. Explosive, loud, and extremely violent.
ESCALATING DESTRUCTION
A world full of unstable anomalies, hidden portals, and high-risk opportunities that can supercharge a run, or end it instantly. Push forward greater rewards, unlock powerful modifiers, and upgrades that permanently expand your possibilities.
MENTAL’S HORDE, REMIXED
Familiar foes are back, and they brought friends. Face a selection of classic Serious Sam enemies alongside fresh monsters, all under Mental’s control, all engineered to overwhelm you, and all begging to be turned into mush.
ARCADE-STYLE FPS ENERGY
High-adrenaline, run-and-gun arena chaos, big battlefields, nonstop pressure, a lot of backpedaling, and perfectly-timed one-liners when everything’s on fire. Shatterverse leans into the Serious Sam legacy and pushes it forward with procedurally shifting runs across hand-crafted arenas set in previously unexplored worlds.
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