Serious Sam: Shatterverse is not a broken shooter. In some ways, that makes its identity crisis even more frustrating. The guns fire, the enemies fall and the upgrade cards produce the expected shower of bigger numbers—but very little of it feels like the gloriously blunt, horde-crushing series whose name is on the box.
Behaviour Interactive has taken Sam Stone into a co-op roguelite built for one to five players, with runs through shifting arenas and five alternate versions of Sam. Think of Vampire Survivors translated into a first-person arena shooter, then dressed in a colourful, Fortnite-adjacent multiverse costume. At its core, it is serviceable. As a Serious Sam game, it is a poor fit.
This review covers the current PC release on Steam, played on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and GeForce RTX 5090 system. The Australian launch price is A$28.49, reduced to A$25.64 until September 7. The score reflects the game available at launch.
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Serious Sam: Shatterverse review — Sam without the serious scale
The classic formula works because it understands spectacle. Huge spaces become pressure cookers as dozens of enemies charge from every direction, each type turning movement and weapon choice into a frantic little problem. Shatterverse borrows the monsters and guns, but compresses the action into smaller rooms and a run-based rhythm of combat, reward selection and repetition.
The result functions, but rarely surprises. Shooting is responsive enough, movement gets the job done and stacking boons can eventually turn a modest loadout into something satisfyingly silly. Cards, permanent upgrades, character abilities and run modifiers provide a recognisable roguelite loop. There is a decent evening here for friends who want uncomplicated targets and constant upgrades.
Yet the design spends too long asking players to unlock the fun. Early runs are thin, the arenas recycle quickly and the enemy pressure often lacks the ridiculous scale associated with Sam. The multiverse should be permission to go completely feral; instead, it often feels like a convenient machine for turning one unmistakable action hero into a roster of fashionable archetypes.
Behaviour says it wanted longtime fans to recognise the series while making the systems approachable for newcomers. That explains the cleaner, softer presentation, but it also exposes the central problem: the target audience is still made up largely of Serious Sam fans. Chasing a broader, younger crowd has diluted the thing most likely to attract anyone in the first place.
The roguelite loop works, but the personality does not
The best moments arrive when a build finally gathers momentum. Weapon perks, elemental effects and character abilities begin feeding into one another, and the screen becomes busy enough to suggest the old mayhem. It is the same compulsion that makes wave-survival games so easy to lose an hour to: one more card, one more upgrade, one more attempt.
But “one more run” needs either mechanical depth or irresistible flavour. Shatterverse is light on both. The arenas are not memorable enough, progression is slow to reveal its better toys, and the constant multiverse banter replaces Sam’s blunt charm with a lot of noise. Other co-op roguelites such as Rogue Point are already competing for this audience, and a familiar logo is not a substitute for a sharper hook.
Steam players have noticed the mismatch. At the time of writing, only 46 per cent of 293 user reviews are positive, leaving the game with a Mixed rating. Some negative reviews come from people with less than an hour recorded, so “review bomb” is an easy defence. It is also incomplete. The recurring complaints—small encounters, weak franchise identity, sluggish progression and rough performance—are visible almost immediately. As we have argued before, Steam players now shape a game’s reputation faster than traditional reviews, fairly or otherwise.
Why is this colourful shooter working a 5090 so hard?
The biggest concern is optimisation. On a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 5090 system, the PC was audibly working harder than the visuals and arena scale appeared to justify. That is not a laboratory benchmark, but it is a meaningful real-world warning: the same machine ran the far more lavish Onimusha: Way of the Sword more quietly.
The official recommended specification targets 1080p and 60 frames per second on High with an RTX 2080 or Radeon RX 7600. Players on less extravagant PCs therefore deserve patches, clearer settings guidance and a serious optimisation pass. A stylised arena shooter should not make top-end hardware sound as though it is rendering the fall of civilisation.
There are sensible decisions underneath the disappointment. Offline solo play and peer-to-peer co-op mean the game is not designed to vanish with a server shutdown, while the sub-A$30 price is more honest than a full-priced live-service gamble. Those choices make Shatterverse easier to tolerate, not easier to recommend.
Serious Sam: Shatterverse is a competent roguelite shooter wearing an IP it neither understands nor improves—a functional multiverse detour that leaves the real Sam stranded somewhere off-screen.
