Sam goes co-op and roguelite — and launches tomorrow
Serious Sam: Shatterverse, the multiverse-hopping co-op spin-off developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by Devolver Digital, launches on August 31, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store. If you've been looking for a reason to get five people in a voice chat and shoot aliens at absurd velocity, your window is now.
The setup
Über Mental — the series' perpetual big bad — has done something new this time: fractured the walls between dimensions. The result is the Shatterverse, and the solution is a team of Sams pulled from alternate timelines who have to work together to repair it. It's a deliberately maximalist premise that gives Behaviour Interactive room to do whatever they want with the visual identity of each run.
The tone is consistent with what Dead by Daylight's studio has shown it does well: tight cooperative loop design and systematic escalation. Shatterverse is a 1-to-5-player co-op roguelite FPS, and every structural choice is designed to make repeated runs feel different.
How the runs work
Each run is a set of wave-based fights across procedurally generated map layouts. Between waves, players choose upgrades for their arsenal — boons that stack and interact with each other, plus optional run modifiers that can bend core rules of the game. The classic Serious Sam weapons are all here (the double-barreled shotgun, the minigun, the rocket launcher in all its variants), joined by new armaments specific to the Shatterverse setting.
Death ends a run, but progression continues: unlocks and meta-progression carry over, and each attempt can be approached with a different build philosophy. Behaviour Interactive has described the design goal as making sure no two runs feel identical — a reasonable promise given the combination of procedural maps, boon interactions, and modifier stacking.
The studio fit
Behaviour Interactive is best known for asymmetric horror in Dead by Daylight, which makes Shatterverse a noticeable genre pivot. But the underlying competency — designing systems that generate replayability through player choice rather than purely random generation — transfers well. Roguelite shooters live and die on the quality of their upgrade interactions, and Behaviour's track record of managing complex player-versus-environment loops is encouraging on that axis.
The Devolver Digital connection also matters. Their Steam page has been running a public playtest ahead of launch, and the feedback loop from those sessions appears to have influenced pacing and onboarding. Early playtest impressions ranged from enthusiastic to cautiously optimistic, with most friction points centering on the learning curve for new players unfamiliar with the series.
What to expect at launch
The game ships tomorrow. Devolver titles typically avoid aggressive day-one monetization — the expectation is a complete experience at the base price, with potential DLC runs and additional content added post-launch if the game finds its audience. The co-op focus means the experience scales meaningfully with the number of friends you bring: solo runs are viable but demonstrably harder than the full five-player configuration.
If the roguelite FPS category interests you at all, Serious Sam: Shatterverse is worth watching on launch day. The source material has always been loud, fast, and unconcerned with subtlety. That's exactly the right DNA for this genre.