Nic Duchesne spills the beans
Apparently, one Serious Sam is no longer enough to save humanity. So why stop at one universe when you can blow them all up at once? With Serious Sam: Shatterverse, Behaviour Interactive throws everyone's favourite bearded hero into a multiverse where Mental's hordes are still ridiculously numerous, the weapons are still wildly overpowered, and, apparently, enemy weak points can be found in some rather... unexpected places. We caught up with Nic Duchesne, Producer of the game, between two explosions to talk about Shatterverse, its ambitions, its development, and what it takes to create an FPS that clearly has no intention of slowing down.
The pitch that fits into an explosion
If you had to introduce Serious Sam: Shatterverse to someone who has never played an entry in the series, but you only had the time it takes for a Kamikaze to explode, what would you say?
Nic DuchesneShatterverse is an accessible FPS roguelike built to be enjoyed with friends and family or fully playable as a classic solo experience. It delivers frantic, action-packed chaos as you become a one-Sam army battling Mental's hordes across vibrant, diverse worlds. It's bite-sized mayhem.
The name "Shatterverse" opens up a world of possibilities. What was the first "What if..." that came to mind when imagining this new universe? The one that made you say "Okay, we couldn't have done that in a classic Serious Sam game."
Nic DuchesneThe Shatterverse lets us draw inspiration from across the franchise and beyond, giving us room to explore a bit of everything we wanted. This is especially clear in the boss designs, which blend old and new ideas. It also opens many possibilities for future content, and we already have plenty of ideas if players want us to keep supporting the game.
The "more is more" syndrome
With Serious Sam, it sometimes feels like the only rule is: "If there are already a lot of enemies... let's add even more!" Was there ever an idea proposed during development that was so absurd the whole team burst out laughing... before ultimately deciding to put it in the game?
Nic DuchesneWe have a Multiverse Anomaly which shrinks enemies and boosts their speed, turning them into pint-sized speed demons. You can also carry all 18 weapons at once as we're not afraid to make you powerful, because you'll need every advantage. Development had no rigid rules: anyone could pitch an idea, no matter how outrageous, and if it sounded fun, we prototyped it the next day.
An FPS that embraces being an FPS
Nowadays, many shooters try to tell epic stories, slow down the pace, or borrow RPG mechanics. Is developing a Serious Sam game in 2026 a way of bucking the trend by championing a more immediate kind of fun? Or do you think players are actually craving a return to that "old-school" approach?
Nic DuchesneMany modern games seem to be adding complexity simply to seem deeper. We wanted Shatterverse to know exactly what it is: an excuse for quick bursts of silly fun with friends. It's easy to pick up and just deep enough to reward mastery, while even a complete newcomer can jump in, start shooting, and make things go boom.
The monster that never should have existed
In a franchise like Serious Sam, the enemies are almost as famous as the hero. Is there a creature or boss that gave you such a hard time during development that you ended up hating it just as much as the players are going to love it?
Nic DuchesneArachnoids and Kamikazes are the bane of the Serious Sam franchise, originally designed to be relentless nuisances. They reflect an era when games were often more adversarial toward players and when developers wanted to mess with players directly, an approach that has faded as expectations around difficulty and fairness have changed. We wanted to modernize these enemies without declawing them. They remain among the worst threats players can face and must be dealt with quickly.
Behind the scenes of the madness
One imagines that a Serious Sam game isn't exactly developed in an atmosphere of calm and serenity... What is the development anecdote that still makes the whole team at Behaviour Interactive laugh? The kind that makes you say: "That could only happen on a Serious Sam game."
Nic DuchesneDeveloping Serious Sam: Shatterverse has been as chaotic and funny as you'd expect. I still remember the day a developer asked if they could put an enemy's weak point up its butt. Once I stopped laughing, I said "Why not?"
The industry is changing... is Sam?
Between layoffs, skyrocketing production costs, subscription services, and increasingly demanding players, video game development has never seemed so complex. How do you keep making a game as uninhibited as Serious Sam in an industry that is becoming less and less so?
Nic DuchesneWith everything happening in the industry, I think we need to refocus on the games, the teams behind them, and the passion and creativity that drive them. We were fortunate to develop Serious Sam: Shatterverse, it's not a remake, not a remaster, and not a conventional sequel, but it's a chance to honor the series while taking it in a bold new direction and trying new things.
Unexpected influences
It's easy to imagine Doom, Quake, or Duke Nukem among the series' influences. But what is the most unlikely inspiration for Shatterverse? A movie, a comic book, a TV series, a book... or even a real-life situation that ended up influencing the game without anyone realizing it?
Nic DuchesneThe team drew heavily from 1980s and '90s action movies, even naming each development sprint after one. We wanted to recapture their straightforward thrill of jumping into the action and getting the job done. I also often thought about Conker's Bad Fur Day, a game that would be difficult to make today.
Between waves of Kamikazes...
When you needed to catch your breath during development... what did you play? Did you stick to FPS games... or did the whole team gather for a game where the only danger involved watering tomatoes?
Nic DuchesneFunny you mention tomatoes, I'm still a big Stardew Valley fan after all these years. Our team is creatively diverse, so we played just about everything. As game developers, we need to stay open to every genre because there's always something to learn.
The question Mental would ask you
Imagine Mental showed up at your office today to interview you. What would his first question be... and more importantly, what answer could you give him to stop him from destroying the multiverse?
Nic DuchesneI think Mental and I could have a deep conversation about what it takes to lead a multiverse-spanning army of wildly diverse, unruly goons. Still, I doubt anything I said could stop him, he's remarkably single-minded when it comes to conquering the multiverse.
If Serious Sam himself played Shatterverse for five minutes, what is the one phrase you'd dream of hearing him say as he put down the controller?
Nic Duchesne"That's gonna leave a mark."
