# Serious Sam

Serious Sam is a video game series created and primarily developed by Croteam. It consists predominantly of first-person shooters. The series follows the advances of mercenary Sam "Serious" Stone against Mental, an extraterrestrial overlord who attempts to destroy humanity at various points in time. The first game, Serious Sam: The First Encounter, was released for Microsoft Windows in March 2001. Several spin-offs were developed by other developers, such as a Palm OS conversion of The First Encounter by InterActive Vision, Serious Sam: Next Encounter (on GameCube and PlayStation 2) by Climax Solent, and Serious Sam Advance (on Game Boy Advance) by Climax London. All three were published by Global Star Software.

## Development

Croteam created a proprietary engine for use in both Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. At the time Croteam was making Serious Sam, licensing other engines was costly (upwards of US$1 million), so they made their own from scratch, following the feature set of the first Doom engine, which simulated 3D spaces in 2D, and did not include up or down targeting. As they were creating their own, both Duke Nukem 3D (which added up-and-down freelook) and Quake (a fully 3D rendered environment) were released, requiring Croteam to incorporate these features into their engine for their game to be competitive. Development was further complicated when the first 3D accelerators were released, prompting Croteam to develop for hardware rendering over software. Recognizing they needed to bring something new to what other games were pushing at that time, Croteam decided that they would make their Serious Engine support extremely large environments, with virtual view distances of over a kilometre, physics support, and capability of rendering up to a hundred enemies on screen at a time, and do this on the processing power of what current low-end computers using the original Pentium CPUs could handle. The team devised ways of doing object path caching so that they only had to perform collision detection with environmental features every few seconds rather than every cycle. Collision detection was also sped up by approximating the environment with spheres rather than boxes. This also enabled them to have multidirection gravity which was used for some of the game's secret areas.
Serious Engine 1 is available as open-source software. A more powerful iteration of the Serious Engine was developed for use in Serious Sam 2 and is known as Serious Engine 2. It supports many features of modern GPUs such as pixel and vertex shaders, HDR, bloom and parallax mapping. Serious Engine 3 was used in Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter and Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter. It includes detailed shading, and enemies are re-modelled to look more realistic. This engine is also being developed to harness the full capacity of HDR and high definition mapping. An updated version, Serious Engine 3.5, is used in Serious Sam 3.
Serious Sam is voiced by John Dick.
After the release of both HD remakes of the original Serious Sam episodes, Devolver Digital re-released both classic encounters in 2010 and Serious Sam 2 in 2011.

## Games
### Main series

| Title | Details |
| Serious Sam: The First Encounter Original release date: WW: 21 March 2001 | Release years by system: 2001 – Windows 2001 – Palm OS 2002 – Xbox HD Version 2009 – Windows 2010 – Xbox 360 2017 – Linux 2020 – Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
| Serious Sam: The First Encounter Original release date: WW: 21 March 2001 | Notes: First-person shooter Published by Gathering of Developers The Xbox version of the game is published by Gotham Games, which combines The First Encounter and The Second Encounter into one game In 2003, both The First Encounter and The Second Encounter were compiled into one single collection titled Serious Sam: Gold On 24 November 2009, The First Encounter was re-released with high-definition graphics titled Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter On 31 March 2017, The First Encounter was re-released with virtual reality support titled Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter A bundle containing both of the original games, titled Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, was developed by Alligator Pit and was in early access from 2014 until its full release in 2019 |
| Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Original release date: WW: 5 February 2002 | Release years by system: 2002 – Windows, Xbox HD Version 2010 – Windows, Xbox 360 2017 – Linux 2020 – Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
| Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Original release date: WW: 5 February 2002 | Notes: First-person shooter Published by Gathering of Developers The Xbox version of the game is published by Gotham Games, which combines The Second Encounter and The First Encounter into one game In 2003, both The First Encounter and The Second Encounter were compiled into one single collection titled Serious Sam: Gold On 28 April 2010, The Second Encounter was re-released with high-definition graphics titled Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter On 4 April 2017, The Second Encounter was re-released with virtual reality support titled Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter A bundle containing both of the original games, titled Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, was developed by Alligator Pit and was in early access from 2014 until its full release in 2019 |
| Serious Sam 2 Original release date: WW: 11 October 2005 | Release years by system: 2005 – Windows, Xbox |
| Serious Sam 2 Original release date: WW: 11 October 2005 | Notes: Developed by Croteam and published by 2K Games Sequel to Serious Sam: The Second Encounter |
| Serious Sam 3: BFE Original release date: WW: 22 November 2011 | Release years by system: 2011 – Windows 2012 – Mac OS X, Xbox 360, Linux 2014 – PlayStation 3 2020 – Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
| Serious Sam 3: BFE Original release date: WW: 22 November 2011 | Notes: Developed by Croteam and published by Devolver Digital Prequel to Serious Sam: The First Encounter On 10 November 2017, Serious Sam 3: BFE was re-released with virtual reality support titled Serious Sam 3 VR: BFE |
| Serious Sam 4 Original release date: WW: 24 September 2020 | Release years by system: 2020 – Windows, Stadia 2021 – PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S |
| Serious Sam 4 Original release date: WW: 24 September 2020 | Notes: Developed by Croteam and published by Devolver Digital Prequel to Serious Sam 3: BFE |
| Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem Original release date: WW: 25 January 2022 | Release years by system: 2022 – Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S |
| Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem Original release date: WW: 25 January 2022 | Notes: Developed by Timelock Studio and Croteam Published by Devolver Digital Standalone expansion to Serious Sam 4 |

### Spin-offs

| Title | Details |
| Serious Sam: Next Encounter Original release dates: NA: 14 April 2004EU: 30 April 2004 | Release years by system: 2004 – GameCube, PlayStation 2 |
| Serious Sam: Next Encounter Original release dates: NA: 14 April 2004EU: 30 April 2004 | Notes: Developed by Climax Solent and published by Global Star Software |
| Serious Sam Advance Original release dates: NA: 14 April 2004EU: 30 April 2004 | Release years by system: 2004 – Game Boy Advance |
| Serious Sam Advance Original release dates: NA: 14 April 2004EU: 30 April 2004 | Notes: Developed by Climax London and published by Global Star Software |
| Serious Sam Double D Original release date: WW: 30 August 2011 | Release years by system: 2011 – Windows 2013 – Xbox 360 (XXL) |
| Serious Sam Double D Original release date: WW: 30 August 2011 | Notes: Developed by Mommy's Best Games and published by Devolver Digital An expanded version, Serious Sam Double D XXL, was released for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade in February 2013, introducing a local cooperative multiplayer mode. The Windows version followed as a free update for the original game |
| Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack! Original release date: WW: 15 September 2011 | Release years by system: 2011 – Android, iOS 2012 – Windows |
| Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack! Original release date: WW: 15 September 2011 | Notes: Developed by Be-Rad Entertainment and published by Devolver Digital |
| Serious Sam: The Random Encounter Original release date: WW: 24 October 2011 | Release years by system: 2011 – Windows |
| Serious Sam: The Random Encounter Original release date: WW: 24 October 2011 | Notes: Developed by Vlambeer and published by Devolver Digital |
| Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter Original release date: WW: 24 January 2012 | Release years by system: 2012 – Windows |
| Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter Original release date: WW: 24 January 2012 | Notes: Developed by Eric Ruth Games and published by Devolver Digital |
| Serious Sam's Bogus Detour Original release date: WW: 20 June 2017 | Release years by system: 2017 – Windows, Linux |
| Serious Sam's Bogus Detour Original release date: WW: 20 June 2017 | Notes: Developed by Crackshell and published by Devolver Digital |
| Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope Original release date: WW: 20 September 2017 | Release years by system: 2017 – Windows |
| Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope Original release date: WW: 20 September 2017 | Notes: Developed by Croteam VR and published by Devolver Digital |
| I Hate Running Backwards Original release date: WW: 22 May 2018 | Release years by system: 2018 – Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
| I Hate Running Backwards Original release date: WW: 22 May 2018 | Notes: Developed by Binx Interactive and published by Devolver Digital |
| Serious Sam: Tormental Original release date: WW: 8 April 2022 | Release years by system: 2022 – Windows |
| Serious Sam: Tormental Original release date: WW: 8 April 2022 | Notes: Developed by Gungrounds Published by Devolver Digital Formerly in early access from 2 April 2019 |