Serious Sam: Shatterverse is a 1–5 player co-op roguelite FPS from Behaviour Interactive and Devolver Digital. It launched in August at $19.99, sits at Mixed on Steam across 604 reviews, and carries a 65 on OpenCritic.
Our verdict: Serious Sam’s roguelite formula delivers chaotic co-op blasting that rewards creative boon stacking and wild modifier combos across shifting universes. It also buries all of that behind the worst onboarding we’ve seen this year.
The First Act Is Actively Sabotaging This Game
The obvious fix, as one reviewer suggested, is to tie weapon prefixes to permanent currency rather than run completion, so a first run at least feels varied. As it stands, Behaviour have built a game that shows you its weakest hour first and asks you to trust them.
The Gunplay Is the Other Half of the Problem
Even past the gate, weapons divide opinion. The recurring complaint is that stock guns feel flat — sound design and impact feedback lack distinct identity, so weapons blur into each other, and accuracy and range are hard to judge visually.
The starting three get it worst. The pistol is weak with poor refire, the shotgun gibs anything within about two feet and nothing beyond, and the tommy gun is essentially a faster pistol. Unlock the prefixes and this changes substantially — players consistently say prefixed weapons feel far better than stock. But that’s the gate again: the version of the arsenal designed to feel good is the version you can’t have yet.
Controls also come in for criticism as “floaty and a little unresponsive,” which experienced FPS players will notice immediately. And crouch has been removed entirely — barely used in Serious Sam historically, but its total absence is odd.
What’s Genuinely Good
Carry every type at once. Unequipped guns reload themselves. Ammo is effectively infinite beyond the magazine.
Randomised perks bought mid-run with coins, upgradeable to Rank 3 or 5 with permanent currency.
Six slots, with set bonuses at two and four matching. The most interesting build layer.
Health comes primarily from finishing enemies. Armour is scarcer and more precious.
The Co-Op Has a Communication Problem
Shatterverse supports 1–5 players online with crossplay, and playing with friends is where most people had the best time — the Left 4 Dead comparison comes up repeatedly, and difficulty scales with party size so everyone has to pull their weight.
But in quickplay with strangers, there is effectively no way to communicate. No in-game chat, no callouts, no voice lines — just a basic ping. For a five-player co-op game with scaling difficulty, that’s a significant gap, and one player specifically wished for something like Deep Rock Galactic‘s greeting lines.
There’s an odd side effect elsewhere too: character dialogue restarts if interrupted by a mission briefing, which means you can hear the same exchange four or five times in a single mission. Combined with reports that the snow biome dominates early runs with near-identical layouts, repetition sets in faster than it should.
Things to Know Going In
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| Presentation Nobody Argues AboutArt, music, enemy design and biomes are praised even by players who disliked the game. The cartoony direction genuinely improves some designs, and small touches like squashed Gnaars under jump pads show a team enjoying itself. | Only Five Sams, With Similar UltimatesThe roster feels thin for a roguelite built around character choice, and the ultimate abilities are too close to each other — and too tame for a game about deleting hundreds of enemies at once. | Act I Hides the Entire Game Behind ItselfThree weapons, no prefixes, no extra characters, and enemies that don’t threaten you — for an hour. The version of Shatterverse that new players meet is deliberately the worst one, and most of the Mixed rating traces straight back to it. |
| The Trinket Set BonusesSix slots with bonuses at two and four matching gives genuine build decisions between runs, upgraded with a currency earned by selling duplicates. The system players actually engage with once they’re through the gate. | Repetition Sets In EarlyThe snow biome dominates opening runs with near-identical layouts, and interrupted dialogue restarts from the top — so you can hear the same exchange five times in one mission. | Stock Weapons Feel FlatSound and impact feedback lack distinct identity, accuracy and range are hard to read, and the starting three are the worst offenders. Prefixes fix most of it — and prefixes are locked behind the gate. |
| Excellent Optimisation and Steam Deck VerifiedSmooth performance, crossplay, and under 10 GB installed — which multiple reviewers flagged as genuinely impressive in 2026, and a pointed contrast with Siberian Mayhem’s technical state. | The Catalyst Orb GrindPermanent upgrade currency accrues slowly enough that unlocking a satisfying arsenal takes longer than it should, which compounds the onboarding problem rather than relieving it. | No Way to Talk to AnyoneNo chat, no callouts, no voice lines in quickplay — just a ping. In a five-player co-op game where difficulty scales with party size, that’s a real omission. |
| Characters That Actually LandStrong voice work, with Alien Sam and Broken Sam the standouts, and a cast several players called a clear improvement over Serious Sam 4 and Siberian Mayhem — games that tried the same thing and missed. | Floaty Controls, and No CrouchMovement reads as slightly unresponsive to experienced FPS players, and crouch has been removed entirely. Rarely used in this series, but its complete absence is strange. | Thin After Act IIINo endless mode and little beyond the three-act structure. For a roguelite — a genre defined by the loop outlasting the content — running out of reasons to run again is the most damaging thing on this list. |
The Verdict
There’s a real and enjoyable game inside Shatterverse, and the people who found it are unusually passionate about defending it. The trinket system has genuine depth, the presentation is excellent across the board, it’s superbly optimised, and in co-op with friends it does exactly what a loud arcade shooter should. The Gunfire Reborn comparison is apt and flattering.
But Behaviour have made a structural decision that’s costing them enormously. Locking the prefixes, the extra Sams and most of the mechanical interest behind an hour of deliberately easy, three-weapon content means a huge number of players form their opinion during the worst part of the game and never see the rest. When your positive reviews all say “push through the first hour,” the first hour is the problem.
The other flaws are real too — flat stock gunplay, floaty movement, predictable bosses, no way to communicate in quickplay, and not much to do once you’ve cleared Act III. Several are patchable. The onboarding one is the most patchable of all.
A note on the reception: the Mixed rating deserves reading carefully. Some of the negativity is substantive and fair. Some of it is people angry that this isn’t Serious Sam 5, which it never claimed to be. And some is aimed at things that have nothing to do with whether the game is any good — including, per multiple players, the inclusion of a playable female character. Weigh reviews on their substance rather than their volume, and there’s plenty of substantive criticism to weigh without the rest.
The honest read: wait for a sale, and go in knowing the first hour is a tax rather than a taster. At $15.99 or below, with a friend or two and the patience to reach Act II, this is a decent time. At full price, as a solo player, expecting a mainline Serious Sam — you’ll be disappointed, and you’ll be disappointed early.
If Behaviour front-load the arsenal in a patch, this becomes a considerably better-reviewed game overnight without a single change to the combat.
For more game reviews, check out our full reviews section.
