Serious Sam HD is already out on PC and is set for an early 2010 release on Xbox Live Arcade. In addition to the updated visuals, the game adds a bizarre family-friendly filter (Happy Fun Mode) and plenty of old-school action. We shot a few questions at Croteam's CEO Roman Ribaric and he was kind enough to indulge us with some answers.
What’s going on in Croatia these days? Is this image accurate?
Same as everywhere else these days, everyone is waiting for others to pay first, so seems we are all waiting for Godot. Other than that, all is good. Did you know that Bill Gates has been cruising our coast for years? Same as Roman Abramovic with his big cruiser. They seem to like our coast, clean sea and good food, so that's why they are returning each year. What do you say about that?
History is not my thing, but I do think we arrived much earlier.
Serious Sam is a pretty twitchy game (compliment!). Have you had to make any gameplay tweaks to accommodate players using gamepads on consoles?
Yes, we added several great options to accommodate gamepads. One of those is an option to enable auto-aiming. That helps those players that have a difficulty in accurately targeting the enemy. As you know, Serious Sam is not about hitting one enemy in the head at a time, it's rather how to hit numerous enemies anywhere at once.
Also, we added an "auto center view" option. That should help those that have a difficulty in trying to stabilize the aim in the center of the screen after, for example, a long fight in the air with a bunch of harpies.
Happy Fun Mode. What the hell?!
I am glad you like it. The idea actually came in at the end of 2000, when we heard that a sequel to that other hero game is soon to be released. We initially thought we were screwed and we won't see a single kuna out of the original Serious Sam sales. At that time our game was just about to be finished and then to be released in early 2001. So, we thought we needed something new, some never before seen feature. On top of that, Germans asked us to put green blood, so it can get the green light from the ratings board. So, I told them we can add candies as well, that should surelly help the process. Then we thought, hold on, how about if we really add that to the game and say it's a unique selling point. We all said yes to that great idea and quickly implemented it. Unfortunately, almost nobody noticed it when the game was out. That would stil be the case if I not told Devolver guys we have that feature and would like to show it off, so they made HD video of it. I even created the achivement for it called Co-op Hippy. Now, everyone knows it's in. Funny what a clever marketing can do. And we have some other features like this one that is not widely known. For example, did you know that you can tweak the game settings to resemble the current greyish look of popular millitary games? No? OK, then expect to see more movies to show that and some other features as well.
Second Encounter HD is in the works, right? Are you guys involved in development for that, too?
Correct, we are working on that as well. That version will have a few surprises. One of them is a new co-op tournament mode that was announced recently. That mode will also be played at Expo 2010 in China. Around 100 million people is said to be expected to attend the show, which will last from early May and until the end of October 2010 and will also host a big multiplayer tournament. We are pretty excited that Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter is picked as one of the eight games to play.
Can you give any updates on Serious Sam 3?
A: Serious Sam 3 is going good. It is planned to be icing on the cake. And it is obviously coming after HD Second Encounter. It will have all the features that HD has or what is about to be implemented through the future patches for in HD First and Second Encounter. I am talking about things like deathmatch, dedicated servers, coop tournament mode etc., and more new stuff of course.
What are your thoughts on the FPS genre these days? Is there even an FPS “genre” anymore?
Our game is in first person, so we do belong to FPS genre. However, what I don't like is that there are no specific sub-genres defined. Serious Sam is an arcade action FPS, but we somehow always end up compared to FPS games that are either "sneak and hide" games or games with "deep story with one enemy to deal with at one time" or some mix. That's just not a good comparison.
What's also not good is that the above mentioned reviewers also get to review Serious Sam. And then desperately cry for a deep story while they seek for a first tree to hide, while they are getting their ass kicked on Tourist mode. Same thing was in '90s when we had reviewers playing our soccer game, while they were long-time fans of adventure games and hated the sport. Just as I thought how great is to be able to see and play good old games in HD, now we also got old reviewers repackaged in HD. Oldies, but goldies - all making a glorious return.