Date, platforms and a playtest you can try today
A good kind of surprise in Devolver's mail: Serious Sam: Shatterverse, the new experiment with PC gaming's most brutal horde-hunter series, has a date and it's just around the corner. It launches August 31 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and if you don't fancy waiting even three weeks, there's an open playtest live on Steam right now, free and with no waitlist.
The detail that changes the conversation is who's making it: Behaviour Interactive, the creators of Dead by Daylight, the king of asymmetric multiplayer that has spent years at the top of co-op horror. A studio with that multiplayer pedigree taking on the definitive boomer shooter is, at the very least, a combination that begs to be tried.
A multiverse of Sams against Mental's five lieutenants
The premise is as absurd as it is promising. Mental, the series' forever villain, has cracked the barriers between universes, and the solution involves getting the Sams of several dimensions into the same run: you and your mates, all alternate versions of the same meathead, cooperating to repair the Shatterverse and take down his five lieutenants.
In play terms, the formula blends the series' classic run-and-gun —massive hordes, giant arenas and deadpan one-liners while everything burns— with roguelite structure: procedurally generated runs across handmade arenas, anomalies and portals that can supercharge your run or end it on the spot, and permanent upgrades between attempts. The arsenal mixes the classic guns with new toys pulled from the multiverse itself, «big, loud and frankly irresponsible», in the publisher's own words.
Why we're circling it in red
My bet: this is the kind of game that either becomes autumn's co-op addiction or is forgotten in two weeks, no middle ground, and the playtest will be the tell. Behaviour knows how to make games that keep you —Dead by Daylight has been going strong for twelve years—, but the co-op roguelite is a saturated genre and Serious Sam lives precisely off keeping things simple. If the playtest delivers the series' chaos without drowning it in menus, this could be big.
What's clear is that late August is packed: between this, Gamescom and its Opening Night Live and the GTA 6 look, there's no coming up for air. On August 31 we'll know; in the meantime, the Steam playtest is free and those hordes won't shred themselves.
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