Serious Sam has always been about one thing: a stupid number of enemies charging you at once, and you holding the line with a minigun. Turns out that is a decent fit for a roguelite. Serious Sam: Shatterverse lands tomorrow, August 31, on PS5, Xbox Series and PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store, developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by Devolver Digital.
What it actually is
It is a run-based first-person shooter. The setup: Uber Mental tears a hole between universes, so several versions of Sam Stone from different realities get pulled together to sort it out. You fight across procedurally shifting runs through hand-crafted arenas, chasing down five lieutenants, and death just resets you with a new mix of weapons and upgrades to try. Standard roguelite plumbing, then, bolted to the series' run-and-gun arena chaos.
There is co-op, reportedly for up to five players, which lines up with the whole five-Sams conceit. Piling four mates into a Serious Sam horde already sounds like the correct way to play it.
The honest bit
Roguelite shooters are not exactly a rare breed anymore, and plenty of them run out of ideas after the first few hours once the novelty of the run structure wears off. What Serious Sam has going for it is that the core loop, shoot the horde before the horde reaches you, was fun long before roguelites were everywhere. If the weapon and upgrade combos keep throwing up genuinely different runs rather than the same fight with bigger numbers, this could stick.
There is a playtest up on Steam if you want to feel it out before committing. Given Behaviour's usual line is Dead by Daylight rather than arena shooters, this one is worth a look tomorrow to see how the horde holds up in run form.
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