Shatterverse Open Playtest Live Now – Development Update!

Steam post imageHey, Sams!

First of all, the Serious Sam: Shatterverse development team would like to send a huge thank-you to everyone who joined one of our previous playtests and an extra special thank-you to everyone who shared feedback through social media, Discord, and Reddit.

We have gone through everything you said, and your feedback has been incredibly valuable as we continue refining Shatterverse.

With the new playtest about to begin, we wanted to give you a closer look at what you can expect this time around, what has changed since the previous playtest, and what the team has been cooking up.

Gameplay, Weapons, Intel & Balance

Each Sam now has a unique set of modifiers that further shapes how they play.

Cartoon Sam, for example, may move a little slower than the rest of the squad due to his little legs, but his Dash recharges faster to get him out of trouble and, being the lovable arsonist he is, his explosions are bigger by default.

You also felt like the different Intel didn’t pack enough of a punch, so we buffed them across the board.

We have also addressed several gameplay issues:

• Fixed the Difficulty Increase cue playing randomly when the difficulty was not actually increasing.

• Fixed the Electric Affix not appearing during Runs. You can now zap Mental’s horde to your heart’s content.

• Fixed an issue where SBC Cannon projectiles could bounce off Beheaded Rocketeer rockets. The cannon should beat the rockets obviously.

• Made the small, medium, and boss Lava Golems immune to fire because, well… they are made of lava.

• Fixed an issue that allowed some players to purchase Health only once from the shop during multiplayer Runs. The vending machine now has unlimited supplies.

Weapon Rebalancing

• Increased the range of the M1A2 Thompson.

• Removed random base-stat generation, making Weapons of a similar Rank more consistent.

• Rebalanced the number of random Affixes rolled for each Weapon Rank. Higher-Rank Weapons will now consistently have an equal or greater number of Affixes than lower-Rank Weapons.

• Improved Affix scaling based on Weapon Rank, giving higher-Rank gear stronger bonuses.

We have also rebalanced the Sams’ Ultimates to bring them closer together in overall power.

Retro Sam's decoys now wait one second before exploding, giving them a little more time to draw enemies into the blast.

Enemies, AI, Animations & Bosses

You asked for tougher Kleers, so we made them harder to evade.

Good luck out there!

Arachnoids were also a little too accurate, especially when attacking in groups. We have adjusted their aim to keep encounters challenging without making them feel unfair.

The Lava Golem was wayyyyyyy overtuned and killed an absurd amount of players. We have reworked its health, breakable armor pieces, and visual cues to make the fight clearer and fairer.

We have also improved enemy navigation and spawning to reduce cases where enemies could become stuck, appear outside the playable area, or lose track of the Sams.

Levels, Environments & Encounters

• Fixed several cases where doors failed to open or objectives did not trigger correctly.

• Shortened several maps that were taking too long to complete.

• Smoothed out unfair difficulty spikes.

• Reduced the number of Harpies in certain encounters.

Other Fixes

Long dialogue lines could sometimes restart before they had finished. Conversations between the Sams and Netty will now resume more naturally.

We also fixed several issues with Invasion Portals that could cause the music to stop playing until the end of a map.

And, of course, we destroyed a universe’s worth of other bugs.

We hope you have a blast in the new playtest, and we cannot wait to hear what you think.

Share your feedback through YouTube, Twitch, Reddit, social media, or the Serious Sam and Croteam Discord servers. We read it all, and we use it to help make Shatterverse the best Serious Sam experience it can be at launch.

See you in the Shatterverse!

• The Serious Sam: Shatterverse Development Team