Serious Sam: Shatterverse Launches August 31 With 5-Player Co-op

Aug 8, 2026

Serious Sam is heading into the multiverse as Behaviour Interactive and Devolver Digital put a cooperative roguelite spin on the franchise’s trademark run-and-gun FPS action.

Serious Sam is back, but this time one Sam apparently isn’t enough.

Serious Sam: Shatterverse will launch on August 31, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, bringing a new cooperative roguelite approach to the long-running first-person shooter franchise.

Developed by Behaviour Interactive, the studio behind Dead by Daylight, and published by Devolver Digital, Shatterverse combines the huge enemy hordes, oversized weapons, frantic arena battles, and one-liners associated with Serious Sam with procedurally changing runs, persistent upgrades, and multiplayer for as many as five players.

Serious Sam Meets the Multiverse

The premise behind Shatterverse is appropriately chaotic.

Uber Mental has fractured the barriers separating different universes, creating a crisis spanning multiple realities. As a result, different versions of Sam “Serious” Stone must work together to repair the Shatterverse and push back against Mental’s forces.

Players become part of the Serious Program, a multidimensional force fighting battles that other versions of Sam couldn’t finish.

And things haven’t exactly gone well in those other realities.

Mental has already defeated Sam in numerous timelines, leaving players to fight their way through his forces and eventually eliminate five powerful lieutenants standing between them and victory.

Up to Five Sams Can Fight Together

One of Shatterverse’s biggest departures from traditional Serious Sam is its emphasis on cooperative multiplayer.

The game supports one to five players, meaning you can tackle its multiversal war alone or assemble an entire squad of alternate Sams.

That could be a particularly good match for Serious Sam’s established formula.

The franchise has always been built around escalating encounters where increasingly ridiculous numbers of enemies flood enormous arenas. Turning that chaos into a five-player cooperative experience has the potential to push those battles even further.

Serious Sam Goes Roguelite

The bigger change comes from the game’s structure.

Rather than simply progressing through a traditional linear FPS campaign, Shatterverse introduces a run-based roguelite format.

Players travel through shifting universes while acquiring boons, discovering upgrades, experimenting with modifiers, and building increasingly powerful combinations during each run.

Death doesn’t mean starting over completely.

Progression opens additional possibilities for future attempts, encouraging players to experiment with different strategies and builds as they repeatedly venture into the Shatterverse.

That represents a significant modernization of the Serious Sam formula without abandoning the fundamentals that made the series famous.

The Big Guns Aren’t Going Anywhere

Fortunately, “modernization” doesn’t mean Sam has suddenly developed an appreciation for subtlety.

Shatterverse retains classic Serious Sam weapons while adding entirely new ways to turn Mental’s armies into debris.

Players can expect large arenas packed with enemies, high-speed movement, overwhelming hordes, explosions, and the kind of absurd firepower the franchise has delivered since Serious Sam: The First Encounter arrived 25 years ago.

Behaviour describes the arsenal as a combination of familiar Serious Sam staples and new weapons designed for situations where fighting hundreds of enemies is apparently just the warm-up.

Mental’s Army Gets Remixed

The enemies are getting similar treatment.

Veterans will encounter recognizable monsters from previous Serious Sam games alongside entirely new creatures created for Shatterverse.

Procedural elements and shifting runs should also mean players won’t necessarily encounter those threats under identical circumstances every time.

The environments contain unstable anomalies, hidden portals, and opportunities offering potentially powerful rewards—but pursuing them can also bring a run to an abrupt end.

It’s a risk-versus-reward system designed to make players decide just how much more chaos they’re willing to invite.

For Serious Sam, the answer will presumably be all of it.

A Different Developer Takes the Wheel

Shatterverse is particularly notable because series creator Croteam isn’t serving as its primary developer.

Instead, development is being handled by Behaviour Interactive with Croteam’s blessing.

Behaviour is best known for the enormously successful asymmetrical multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight, making a cooperative Serious Sam roguelite an interesting departure for the studio.

The new game was originally revealed during the Xbox Partner Preview in March as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations for Serious Sam.

Longtime fans should at least hear one very familiar element amid all the changes: John J. Dick returns as the voice of Serious Sam.

Serious Sam: Shatterverse Launches August 31

Players won’t have to wait much longer to find out whether the experiment works.

Serious Sam: Shatterverse launches August 31, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store.

A Steam playtest is also available ahead of release, giving PC players an opportunity to request access and experience the new direction before launch.

Turning a classic arena shooter into a multiplayer roguelite is certainly a departure, but the basic ingredients remain unmistakably Serious Sam: huge guns, ridiculous numbers of enemies, enormous battles, and a hero whose preferred solution to an interdimensional catastrophe is overwhelming firepower.

This time, he just has four other Sams backing him up.

Serious Sam: Shatterverse on Steam