Sam I am..
Attending the Croatian game development conference “Reboot Develop” was the perfect spot to play my game from Croatia. This choice was extremely easy. All Croatian voices immediately shouted: “SAM! SAM! SAM!”. But first, I would like to mention the incredible fast development of the Croatian games industry. With a high-class conference such as Reboot Develop – bringing star-developers such as Tim Schaefer, the Romeros, Cliff Bleszinski, or Patrice Désilets (testing the locally developed indie games) to a beach-side paradise conference, which still feels like a large (game) family meeting – Croatia has created its own game-dev paradise. The local developer community is extremely strong and supportive. One of the most interesting outcomes of this community is also their “book of achievements” – a hardback summary featuring games developed in Croatia. And even if Croteam with its hits such as “Serious Sam” or most lately also “The Talos Principles” is a strong and well-known studio, it is only one of many talented voices of this country.
Playing Croteam’s Serious Sam – The First Encounter was simply wonderful. The game is so basic. So wonderful basic. The entire gameplay is narrowed down to shooting enemies and a crazy sense of humour. No senseless and compulsive collecting, no complex storyline (basically only: aliens, future, Egypt), no epic rewards: you can fully concentrate on shooting monsters and saving the world. Short: “Being a hero by creating an alien massacre”. The main game elements are clear: an absurd hero, a variety of ridiculous weapons, and the memorable maniac monsters running while screaming in very .. foreign tongues. You face evil alien frogs, beheaded-rocketeers, beheaded-bombers, beheaded-kamikazes, beheaded-[enter-evil-alien-name-here], crazy werebulls, different forms of mechs, and basically a lot of different not-so-intelligent but fast and aggressive mixtures of mammals, arachnids, machines, bones, and weapons. The most fun and also stressful part are definitely the ridiculous mass-enemy-waves: it feels like thousands (at least!!) different enemies are running towards you, which make the game always to a fast-paced and highly stressful but wonderful high-adrenaline action.
The 3D game engine was for this time a wonderful piece of work. The created scenery, the amazing light effects, the environments full of rich details let players immersive in the alien-Egypt-world. Thanks to the high-performance engine it is possible that literally hundreds of werewulls, alien frogs, and beheaded creatures would run (and shout) at you. The game engine was recently made open-source: https://github.com/Croteam-official/Serious-Engine
In my opinion, definitely one of the most important parts of this game is its multi-player mode: a cooperative kill-fest! Playing this game was really a wonderful and also a very nostalgic experience to me. It is great to be reminded how you can create such a wonderful gameplay with a straight-forward and clear game design and a maniac sense of humour. (BTW this really motivated me to work further on my game – thx Croteam 😉 )
| Release | 2001 |
| Genre | First Person Shooter |
| Developer | Croteam |
| Publisher | Take 2 |
| http://store.steampowered.com/app/41050 | |