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Overview
Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter is Croteam's original arcade FPS, re-released on Steam in August 2019 under Devolver Digital. The game drops Sam 'Serious' Stone into ancient Egypt with a simple mandate: kill everything between him and Mental's base. There are no cover systems, no regenerating health, and no hand-holding. Just open arenas, relentless enemy waves, and enough firepower to level a small continent.
The game sits comfortably in the lineage of classic arena shooters, drawing comparisons to Doom and Quake but carving out its own identity through sheer volume. Enemy counts regularly push into the dozens, and the game never apologizes for it. Levels are wide, visibility is high, and the design philosophy is built around constant motion.
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Gameplay and mechanics
The combat loop in Serious Sam Classic is relentlessly straightforward, which is the entire point. Sam can carry a full loadout of weapons simultaneously, and the game expects players to cycle through all of them constantly. Key weapons include:
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- Double Shotgun for close-range crowd control
- Rocket Launcher for clustered groups
- Minigun for sustained pressure
- Cannon for heavily armored targets
- Revolvers as a reliable fallback
Enemy variety drives the moment-to-moment tension. The Sirian Werebull charges in straight lines and punishes players who stop moving. The Headless Kamikaze screams audibly before detonating, giving you a half-second to react. The multi-story Ugh-Zan boss caps the campaign with a fight that demands everything the game has taught you. Each enemy type has a readable pattern, and learning those patterns is the actual skill ceiling.
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What does the co-op mode offer?
The multiplayer suite is more generous than most players expect from a game of this age. Co-op supports up to 16 players in the full campaign, which transforms an already chaotic solo experience into something genuinely absurd. Local split-screen handles up to 4 players for couch sessions. Versus modes cover Deathmatch and Scorematch for competitive play. The 16-player co-op in particular holds up well, since the game's arena-based design scales naturally with more bodies on screen.
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Content and replayability
The campaign runs across 15 levels set entirely in ancient Egypt, with over 80 secrets scattered throughout. The secret count isn't padding; many of them contain meaningful weapon caches or health bonuses that reward thorough exploration in a game that otherwise punishes standing still. The included Serious Editor and Serious Modeller tools give players the ability to build custom levels, mods, and textures, which has kept a small but active modding community alive well past the original release.
Purchasing through the Revolution bundle on Steam also includes Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter, effectively doubling the content for the same price. For players coming to the series fresh, that bundle is the practical entry point into the classic FPS era of the franchise.