Behaviour Interactive is dragging Serious Sam into a five-player, roguelite future. Here is how Shatterverse tries to modernize a cult FPS without losing its identity.
Serious Sam has always been a series about excess. Too many enemies, too many rockets, too much screaming and not nearly enough cover. After years of sticking close to its early 2000s formula, Serious Sam: Shatterverse is the boldest shift the franchise has attempted yet, pulling in five-player online co-op, roguelite progression, and a new lead developer in Behaviour Interactive.
For a series that has lived and died by old school purity, this is either a smart modernization or a genre pivot that could cut too deep. Shatterverse is being pitched as both, and the details so far paint a clearer picture of what Behaviour and Devolver Digital are trying to do.
Five-player co-op rewires the pace
Serious Sam has flirted with co-op before, but Shatterverse treats it as the backbone of the design. Up to five players control different versions of Sam Stone from across broken dimensions, thrown together after long-time villain Mental shatters reality. This premise is more than a narrative excuse. It gives Behaviour a reason to turn Sam into a small army of Sams, each with their own builds and roles as runs progress.
Classic Serious Sam combat centers on backpedaling while managing massive hordes from all directions. In older games, co-op simply meant more guns in the same chaos. With five-player support and a roguelite structure, Shatterverse has room to build complementary loadouts, stacking boons and modifiers that push players toward informal roles like crowd clearer, elite killer, or support utility.
The trailer already hints at how this changes the feel. Instead of a lone Sam kiting a sandstorm of monsters, you see squads fanning out in wide arenas, overlapping fields of fire while chaos erupts in every corner. It looks less like a traditional Serious Sam campaign and more like a co-op horde shooter where communication matters, even if the tone stays loud and stupid in all the right ways.
Roguelite runs in a multiverse of mayhem
The other big shift is structure. Instead of a linear campaign built around fixed levels, Shatterverse is a run-based roguelite. Behaviour describes hand-crafted combat spaces that get remixed between attempts, turning each dive into a slightly different gauntlet. The bones are still designed arenas, not pure procedural corridors, but their order, modifiers, and enemy pairings change from run to run.
During a run, players stack temporary power boosts. Shots gain elemental effects, movement and reload speeds jump through the roof, weapons mutate into more destructive versions, and special modifiers bend the rules in exchange for higher stakes. Die, and the run ends, but not all progress is lost. Permanent upgrades carry over between attempts, unlocking better starting gear, enhanced health and ammo capacity, and new toys to chase.
This pushes Serious Sam closer to modern co-op roguelites like Gunfire Reborn and Roboquest but with the sheer enemy counts that define Croteam’s creation. The series always had an arcade soul, built around pattern recognition, aggression, and quick restarts. A roguelite wrapper feels like a surprisingly natural way to codify the loop Sam already lived in without saying game over and kicking you to a static checkpoint.
The multiverse premise also justifies the unpredictability. Each Sam is a variant pulled from a different reality, and each run is another broken shard of the universe. It is not subtle, but it gives the constant reshuffling and the presence of five Sams a thematic throughline.
Behaviour Interactive’s stamp on a cult FPS
Perhaps the most surprising part of Shatterverse is who is making it. Behaviour Interactive is best known for Dead by Daylight, an asymmetrical multiplayer hit that thrives on systemic tension, long-tail live support, and constant iteration. None of that screams classic Serious Sam, yet parts of that experience line up neatly with what Shatterverse needs.
Dead by Daylight lives on progression systems, perk builds, and the thrill of small decisions snowballing into a unique match. Shatterverse leans on the same design vocabulary. Short, replayable sessions with build experimentation, meta progression incentives, and a framework that can be expanded with new enemies, modifiers, and arenas over time fit Behaviour’s strengths.
At the same time, the studio has to serve a very different fantasy. Serious Sam is not about cat-and-mouse horror or slow-burn tension. It is about sprinting backward while firing a cannon at a field of screaming skulls. The early footage suggests Behaviour understands that foundation. Familiar weapons like the double-barreled shotgun and minigun return, backed by swarms of classic enemies and new monstrosities tied to Mental’s lieutenants.
The question is whether Behaviour can preserve that primal feel at scale, with online co-op systems, meta progression, and potential live updates layered on top. The studio’s background suggests it can sustain Shatterverse for years if it lands, but fans will be watching closely to see if the shooting itself feels as immediate and crunchy as a mainline Sam title.
What this means for Serious Sam’s identity
After multiple sequels and spin-offs that mostly doubled down on nostalgia, the series was at risk of stagnation. Serious Sam 4 pushed bigger battles but did not fully escape its retro cage. Shatterverse is a more decisive break, reframing Sam as the face of a modern, co-op-forward action game instead of a stubborn throwback.
Core identity elements are still visible. Shatterverse keeps the absurd enemy counts, the signature backpedal-and-strafe rhythm, and the knowingly dumb tone that treats interdimensional catastrophe as an excuse for more explosions. Sam is still Sam, only multiplied by five and scattered across dimensions.
What changes is how you engage that chaos. Runs and progression loops introduce structure around the mayhem. Builds turn impulsive weapon choices into planned synergies. Co-op makes screaming into voice chat part of the experience instead of a side option. It is less about a single heroic power fantasy and more about a group of Sams finding broken but satisfying combinations as the universe collapses around them.
For longtime fans, that could feel like a shift away from the purity of the old campaigns. For lapsed players and newcomers, it might be exactly what the series needed: a recognizably Serious Sam shooter slotted into a format that speaks the language of modern co-op.
Smart modernization or risky genre pivot?
Right now Shatterverse looks like both. As a modernization, the move makes sense. Co-op roguelites are thriving, progression-driven shooters have strong retention, and the Serious Sam formula has always thrived on replayable arena battles more than narrative-driven campaigns. Hand-crafted arenas that reshuffle between runs sound like a way to preserve that classic combat feel while offering long-term hooks.
The risk lies in how strong the connection to past games feels moment to moment. If randomized modifiers dull encounter design instead of sharpening it, or if progression grinds get in the way of jump-in-and-blast sessions, the new structure could undermine what made Serious Sam stand out in the first place. Likewise, five-player co-op only adds value if the game is balanced around groups without making solo play feel like an afterthought.
Behaviour and Devolver are betting that the essence of Serious Sam is not tied to linear level progression, but to a certain flavor of chaos. If Shatterverse can deliver that same overwhelming rush inside a modern roguelite shell, this could be the first Serious Sam in years that feels both true to itself and genuinely current. If it stumbles, it will be remembered as a fascinating but awkward attempt to drag a cult FPS across genres.
With a 2026 launch window on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, there is time for Behaviour to fine-tune the balance between old-school carnage and new-school structure. For now, Serious Sam: Shatterverse looks like a loud, confident answer to a question the series has been dodging for a decade: evolve, or be left behind in the past it kept celebrating.