Serious Sam: The First Encounter and its sequel are part of my favourite LAN memories. Blasting through the campaign with friends on “Serious” difficulty, with infinite lives and friendly fire turned on, provided hours of chaotic fun. When I discovered Crackshell were involved in this top-down interpretation of the series, I immediately jumped on board. Crackshell previously developed Hammerwatch, another top-down coop game I love, and I expected they’d do a great job of recreating the Serious Sam gameplay with retro-visuals, responsive controls, customisable difficulties and excellent local coop support. Unfortunately, at the time this review is published, one of those crucial components is missing.


Boss fights require the same amount of skill and dexterity as in the FPS titles. As their health bar drops, minor enemies flood the arena, and their attacks become more ferocious.

Typically, I’d open a review by discussing the story and context for the gameplay. It exists, and some of the writing and short quips are genuinely entertaining, but this is a game that puts gameplay front and centre, and clearly wants players to focus on cooperative or competitive play. ALl you need to know is that you'll slog your way through eight levels (and one secret level), across ancient Egypt, Turkey and Rome, before heading off to the moon for the final showdown.

Serious Sam games have always been about nimble player movement, ridiculous guns, and pouring thousands of rounds of ammunition into hordes of enemies. Everything translates incredibly well into a twin-stick shooter thanks to responsive controls and a dodge-roll mechanic. Verticality is lost but seeing as the original games funnelled you from open arena to open arena, I barely noticed. Whether you’re using mouse + keyboard or gamepad, dashing around hordes of enemies, landing precise shots and watching your foes explode into a spray of gore, all remains a pleasure from this new perspective.

Levels are intricately designed thanks to the experience Crackshell brings from Hammerwatch, a sprawling, slower-paced, fantasy-themed dungeon crawler. When not kiting foes around open arenas, every map is filled with branching corridors, numerous keycard-locked doors and dozens of secrets to find. Some are as simple as spotting a gap between structures, others require firing a ricocheting bullet through a window on the edge of your field of vision to hit a generator.


Mobs of skeletal horses remain as annoying and deadly as ever. The hidden star you can peeking out of the trees in the top-right is but one of many you’ll find hidden throughout every level.

Gunplay makes the transition intact: the basic pistols are still rubbish, the shotguns remain reliable favourites in almost any circumstance, the minigun is still the perfect choice for crowd control, and the cannon wreaks havoc on friends and foes alike as charged-up cannon balls ricochet off structures and tear through anyone in their path. A mouse reticule is, of course, the most precise way of aiming but laser sights are enabled when using a controller and I had no problem getting through the game on the normal difficulty. The one new feature, a dodge-roll, can be used a limited number of times in a row before recharging, ensuring you can’t just roll around the entire map with no thought for strategy.

In a concession to modern video games, Sam accumulates experience points as he slays hordes of enemies, each level gained unlocks “stars” that can be invested in a range of skills that either enhance combat abilities, your weapons, or survivability. These can make a big difference in how certain weapons perform and keep some of the early weapons from becoming obsolete. In addition to experience and levelling, stars are scattered around each level as secrets, encouraging you to explore. However, backtracking for secrets can drastically slow the flow of the game as there is no overhead map, forcing you to trudge through cleared areas on the hunt for a coloured door you spotted earlier (tip: follow the trails of gore).


Levelling up grants you “stars” that can be invested in a variety of interesting skills. Stars are limited and retraining costs you a percentage of them, so it’s best to mix and match according to your play style.

Your opponents are primarily made up of Serious Sam staples like the Guaar, headless bombers, skeletal horses, charging bulls and bio-mechs, along with some rare spear-tossing merman and aggressive plants that are new. I was always impressed at how the enemies retained the same characteristic as in the FPS titles - headless bombers still rush you in screaming hordes, bio-mechs slowly advance on your position filling the screen with rockets and lasers, and the skeletal horses remain as annoying as ever, charging your position before leaping through the air. In later levels with ever increasing numbers of enemies, the game often feels like a bullet-hell shooter. Generally speaking, to get surrounded is to die. And die you will, even on easier difficulties.

Thankfully, Crackshell provides the same level of customisable difficulty that was seen in Hammerwatch. If you want to play on the easiest difficulty with only one life (or even one hit point), you can. If you want to crank up the difficulty to max but with infinite lives, you can brute force your way through the game. It remains a fantastic system that ensures anyone can play and enjoy the game to completion.


The story is told through simple static loading screens and in-game text boxes.

Cooperative play through the campaign or the horde-based survival mode that repurposes locations form the levels, is incredibly fun and even more chaotic as enemy numbers increase. There is also a competitive mode but I found the chaotic gameplay results in unsatisfying and random outcomes, only good for short bursts. If you want to go a step further, the game comes with the level editor used to build the campaign, a tool that should hopefully see a string of official expansions and dozens of fan made challenges to tackle solo or in a group (though you’ll probably have to draw your own rubbish-looking loading screens).

Unfortunately, this brings me to a sticking point in the current build of the game. Local split-screen coop, despite featuring prominently in early marketing material, is currently accessible only by console commands and is glitchy as hell. LAN is also unavailable so playing cooperatively is currently locked to the Steam or GOG Galaxy client and requires everyone have a decent internet connection. Thankfully the developers have confirmed they plan to continue updating the game and introduce a fully functional local coop mode in the near future.


Even if you ignore the multiplayer modes and game editor, it provides a good 10 hours of non-stop action and secret-hunting across the lengthy campaign. Of course there’s also an achievement for beating the campaign in in under 60 minutes, so your mileage will vary.

The screenshots above should have given you an idea of the glorious 8-bit art style. It works surprisingly well, especially when you add in abundant gore that splatters the environments and a couple more modern effects, like dynamic lighting and shadows. It’s also simple enough that I could usually spot myself in the midst of a horde of enemies. An amazing soundtrack provides catchy background music while exploring, and a high-tempo combat music that’ll get your blood pumping in the midst of the carnage.

If you're a fan of the Serious Sam games, twin-stick shooters or preferably both, there's a lot of fun to be had with Serious Sam's Bogus Detour at a really low digital price. The campaign captures the chaotic charm of the original FPS titles and four players can team up to blast their way through. The survival and deathmatch modes are fun in short bursts but I suspect the longevity of this game will rest with the community and their skills with the game editor. You can pick up Serious Sam's Bogus Detour on GOG or Steam.