Serious Sam: Shatterverse is charging onto PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 on August 31. Published by Devolver Digital and developed by Behaviour Interactive, it takes the series’ trademark over-the-top FPS action and folds in cooperative and roguelite structure.
The premise is a neat solution to a co-op problem: series villain Mental has fractured the walls between universes, so Sams from multiple dimensions must work together to repair the Shatterverse. You travel across shifting universes finishing battles other Sams couldn’t, fighting alongside alternate versions of yourself against Mental’s five lieutenants.
It’s a genuinely clever way to justify five identical protagonists in a series built around one man, and it’s the kind of premise Devolver tends to back.
Circle-Strafing, Now With Four Friends
The core appeal is unchanged: high-adrenaline run-and-gun combat on big battlefields with non-stop pressure, a great deal of backpedalling, and perfectly timed one-liners while everything is on fire. What’s new is that up to five players can do it together.
That’s a meaningful shift for Serious Sam specifically. The series has always been about managing overwhelming numbers through positioning and crowd control — and scaling that to five players changes the geometry of every encounter without changing what the encounters fundamentally are.
Big, loud and frankly irresponsible weaponry, mixing classic Serious Sam guns with new toys plucked from the Shatterverse.
Procedurally shifted runs across hand-crafted arenas, set in worlds the series hasn’t explored before.
Unstable anomalies, hidden portals and high-risk opportunities that can supercharge a run — or end it instantly.
Unlock powerful modifiers and upgrades that permanently expand what’s possible across future runs.
Hand-Crafted Arenas, Procedurally Shuffled
The modifier system does the rest of the roguelite work. Unlockable modifiers keep each run distinct and, as Devolver puts it, uniquely lethal — while the anomalies and hidden portals provide the high-risk, high-reward decisions that give a run its narrative arc.
And the enemies remain the point. Classic Serious Sam foes return alongside fresh monsters under Mental’s control, all of them — in the publisher’s words — begging to be gibbed.
Wait — the Dead by Daylight Studio?
Those are precisely the skills a co-op roguelite needs. Dead by Daylight is a very different game, but the discipline of designing systems that stay interesting across hundreds of sessions transfers directly — and it’s arguably a better fit for a roguelite than a traditional linear-shooter background would be.
Publisher and Pedigree
Serious Sam: Shatterverse launches August 31 on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. The open playtest is live on Steam now, and full details are available at serioussam.com.
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