Serious Sam: Tormental

 

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Serious Sam: Tormental
Release date	8 April, 2022
Genre	Twin-stick shooter, rogue-lite
Mode	Single-player, multiplayer
Distribution	Steam
Specifications
System requirements	OS: Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10 Processor: 2 GHz processor Memory: 2 GB RAM Graphics: 3D graphics card HDD: 1 GB hard drive space
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Input	Keyboard and mouse, internet connection (for Steam)
Engine	Unity
Production information
Developer(s)	Gungrounds
Publisher(s)	Devolver Digital
Programmer(s)	Kristian Macanga Guy Unger Ivan Gabriel Juričić Goran Tomašić
Artist(s)	Guy Unger Menno Stas Ana Marija Lončar Goran Tomašić
Designer(s)	Kristian Macanga
Writer(s)	Darkcola, MD
Composer(s)	Damjan Mravunac Jukio Kallio Sanja Dorić
Series information
Serious Sam
Previous game	Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem

Serious Sam: Tormental is a twin-stick shooter and rogue-lite video game developed by Gungrounds and published by Devolver Digital. One or two players traverse procedurally generated levels across several stages set in the mind of Mental, the overarching antagonist of the Serious Sam series.

Gungrounds initially developed Spitfire Inferno with inspiration from Geometry Wars. After exhibiting the game at several video game conferences, the studio became a part of Croteam Incubator, the development team expanded, and the game's theme was shifted to the Serious Sam series. Spitfire Inferno was renamed Tormental, then Serious Sam: Tormental. It was made available in early access in April 2019 and released in April 2022 for Microsoft Windows.

Plot

Deep in an abandoned temple of Egypt lies a cursed artifact; an ancient device called the Mentaloptican, which is capable of the unthinkable. With this item in hand, Serious Sam could ultimately use it against Mental to defeat him once and for all. This may also be his only chance to dive deep into the twisted world of its mind, the Mindspace, where Sam's quest will lead him against reckless hordes of monsters that are the product of Mental's wicked imagination.

Characters

Allies

• Sam Stone
• NETRICSA
• Bad Bulb
• Bomb
• Ugh-Zan Jr.
• Shopkeeper
• The Switcher
• Skullfish
• Hint Wizard
• Mr. Sandman
• Dr. Wirkbelkuchen
• Trenchcoat
• Crater
• The Buddy
• Senor Gorgonzola
• The Cursed Eyeball of Optomatia VII
• Other Autonomous Thoughts

Other

• Mental (Not seen)

Enemies

• Angrylosaurus
• Annihilodon (Boss)
• Arachnithid Exploder
• Arachnithid Flier
• Arachnithid Matriarch (Boss)
• Arachnithid Spawn
• Arachnithid Spitter
• Arachnithid Terror
• Beheaded Kamikaze
• Bombhead
• Boombat
• Brainstorm (Boss)
• Bullmare
• Calamari
• Cerebull
• Choculamare
• Croakueen
• Defensive Sleep State Subroutine
• Devouer
• Dodour
• Fuminlosaurus
• Gnaar
• Gnaaw
• Gonk
• Gunrilla
• Heliopora
• Hopper
• Hound
• Huntmare
• Jormungandr
• Kleer Skeleton
• Lizard
• Major Bio-mechanoid (Boss)
• Mentalgandr
• Mental Institution (Boss)
• Mental Thought (Boss)
• Pterradactyl
• Red Spinner
• Red Widow
• Slamphibian
• Snacker
• Snorkler
• Shielder
• Toad Hopper
• Vertigo
• Vortex
• Womb
• Wisp

Weapons

• Gun: A highly customisable handgun and the first weapon acquired in the game. Weak damage output and somewhat low rate of fire but has infinite ammo. Upgrades for the Gun can make it significantly more useful and powerful as the player progresses.
  • The Energy Gun: A variant of the gun (used by Bad Bulb) that deals rapid damage to enemies and shocks nearby ones. Uses HP as ammunition.
• Sledgehammer: Melee weapon that, like the Gun, is unlocked by default. It can be used to whack enemies away from the player at close range and can also deal a lot of damage to many close-range enemies at once.
• Baseball Bat: A powerful melee weapon that can swing enemies around and has better range than the sledgehammer. It can also deflect projectiles.
• Bomber: A weapon that fires bombs in a similar fashion to a grenade launcher. Useful for clearing out rooms of enemies and obstacles.
• Boomerang: A throwable weapon that can pierce through several enemies at once. It will return back to the player once thrown, but it is vulnerable to enemy fire and explosions.
• Bouncer: A weapon that fires a big projectile which explodes into a cluster of smaller projectiles that ricochet off walls.
• Buddy Replicator: Fires small yellow flying buddies called Hunters that track down and fire at enemies.
• Circlefire: An automatic weapon with a high rate of fire that fires bullets in a 360 degree radius.
• Discs: Weapon that fires large blades that can travel at fast speeds and bounce from walls, but disperse relatively quickly.
• Electric Shotgun: Electric weapon that can temporarily stun enemies, but has a very short range.
• Flamethrower: A weapon that sets enemies on fire for a short period of time that also damages them. It has a short cooldown before it can be used again.
• Freezegun: This weapon has a chance to slow down or freeze enemies upon contact. It has a slightly low damage output and ammo capacity, but useful in some situations.
• Ghostgun: A weapon that can instantly kill nightmare enemies. The projectiles track enemies and deal a lot of damage, but can also damage the player upon contact.
• Grenade Launcher: A weapon that fires grenades when the fire key is pressed. These grenades have limited range and explode on impact with the ground.
• Harpoongun: A ranged weapon that uses harpoons. The harpoons impale enemies which can get them stuck in walls.
• Machinegun: A submachine gun with a rapid fire rate, but has terrible accuracy and high spread.
• Mini Cannon: A portable artillery weapon that fires cannonballs that can pierce through enemies.
• Multi-crossbow: A weapon that fires 8 arrows in quick succession. The arrows can be collected after they have been fired, but not if they hit an enemy.
• Rocket: A rocket launcher that fires unguided missiles. The missiles have a wide blast radius and deal high damage to enemies.
• Shotgun: A pump-action shotgun with a tight spread and high damage output.
• Serious Bomb: A powerful explosive that can be used to deal damage to every single enemy in the room. The player can only carry a small amount of bombs at any given time.

Gameplay

The Vault.

Serious Sam: Tormental is a twin-stick shooter with rogue-lite elements. It takes place within the mind of Mental, the main antagonist of the Serious Sam series. Mental's frontal lobe serves as a hub area. There are five characters to choose from, starting with Sam "Serious" Stone and unlocking further characters during gameplay. They traverse procedurally generated rooms within multiple thematic stages. Each room contains enemies that need to be defeated before the player can progress. These enemies use either melee or projectiles, both of which inflict damage on the player character. The character can simultaneously use three weapons: a primary weapon, the Gun, with highly available ammunition, a melee weapon, the Sledgehammer, which has infinite ammunition and is used exclusively as a melee weapon, and a "serious" weapon with high power and limited ammo, which can be acquired from Mental Chests or bought from the Shopkeeper. The Gun can be enhanced through "mods" either found in chests or purchased at shops that appear within stages. Chests provide three random upgrades to choose from (which appear at the end of a boss fight), while shops require the spending of the game's main form of currency, or "Figment"s, which are obtained by defeating enemies. Upgrades include bullets that ignite enemies and a rate of fire increase in exchange for a lowered damage per bullet.

To evade enemies and projectiles, the player character can perform a dodge roll, also known as a "brutal" kill. Large enemies with low health may be defeated with such a roll, which grants better rewards than a regular kill. A brutal kill can be performed as indicated by the flashing yellow outline that surrounds that particular enemy.

The player can also activate bombs placed in rooms, which inflict damage on both the character and enemies. Between rooms, characters can be freed using previously collected golden keys to make them selectable at the start of the game. Each character has a unique special ability, such as Sam, who can jump over hazards, while NETRICSA can suck in enemies with a black-hole like ability. A boss occurs at the end of each stage. When the player character's health is depleted, gameplay pauses and the player is reset to the start of the game with all weapons and upgrades revoked. Over time, the player collects thirty-two black keys, or Vault keys, used to unlock power-ups in the Vault that occurs after completing all stages once. The majority of these keys are obtained by completing various challenges and requests from NPCs ("Automonous Thoughts"). These power-ups become permanently available to find during regular gameplay. After the Vault, the stages loop and the player returns to the first stage which sees an increase in difficulty, along with a chance of an "elite" variant of an enemy spawning, which are tougher than the enemies that the player character had fought previously and thus requiring them to use clever thinking or tactics to take down. The game can be played cooperatively with a second local player.

Modes

There are two game modes to choose, which is single-player and local co-op. In co-op, players can revive each other with Ankh Pieces from the enemies they kill and explosives deal twice as much damage.

Development

Serious Sam: Tormental was developed by Gungrounds, a Croatian indie game studio. It was the studio's second game after Rocking Pilot, which was co-developed and published by Mad Head Games in May 2017. Kristian Macanga and Guy Unger initially developed a game titled Spitfire or Spitfire Inferno, which they modelled after Geometry Wars. They had previously collaborated on a game for the "Indies VS PewDiePie" game jam held in November 2014. While exhibiting Spitfire Inferno at the Reboot InfoGamer conference in Croatia, it was acknowledged by members of Croteam, who tracked the team's progress across further events—Reboot Develop, the Slovenian Games Conference, and the Central European Games Conference—and eventually invited them to Croteam's business incubator programme. The Gungrounds team grew over time, adding programmers Ivan Gabriel Juričić and Goran Tomašić, as well as artist Ana Marija Lončar, who the team had met at Reboot InfoGamer 2018. Additionally, Croteam's Roman Ribarić, Andrej Smoljan and Damjan Mravunac acted as producer, sound effects artist and composer, respectively. Gungrounds used the Unity game engine since the team members were already familiar with it and because it supported multiple platforms.

As the expanded team was unhappy with Spitfire Inferno's theme, Ribarić suggested that Gungrounds shift the game to the Serious Sam universe. After choosing Mental's mind as the target setting, the game was renamed Tormental. It drew further influence from Nuclear Throne, The Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, and other Serious Sam games. Croteam's incubator programme was formally announced as Croteam Incubator in March 2018. At this time, Gungrounds was based in the same Zagreb office as the five other studios in the programme. A prototype of Tormental was exhibited at the April 2018 Reboot Develop conference in Dubrovnik to attract the attention of game designer Rami Ismail, who, after extensively playing the game, gave his detailed impressions to the developers.

Tormental was due to be launched in Steam Early Access in August 2018 but was delayed to allow for quality assurance and the completion of some existing features. A prototype was released as freeware via Itch.io in March 2019. The early access version, now renamed Serious Sam: Tormental, was launched on 2 April, 2019 for Windows, with Croteam Incubator acting as the publisher. This version introduced John Dick as the voice actor for Sam. The game was initially intended to remain in early access for 6–12 months, depending on player feedback and prospective further features. Upon the initial release, Gungrounds announced a shortened prospective period of 2–3 months, though noting that it could change based on internal milestones. The studio anticipated bringing the game to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One should the first release be successful. With the "Fortress Update" released on 8 April, 2022, Serious Sam: Tormental was taken out of early access with Devolver Digital as its publisher.

Reception

Serious Sam: Tormental received "mixed or average reviews", according to the review aggregator website Metacritic, which calculated a weighted average rating of 66/100 based on five critic reviews. Overall, the game received mixed reviews. Overall, the game was praised by critics for its humour, art, and combat, but with criticism towards technical issues, repetitiveness, and lack of innovation.

Daniele Cucchiarelli of The Games Machine enjoyed the game's humour and found it to fit with the rest of the series. He commended the expansive arsenal and challenge the game poses, as well as the "nice" and distinguishing art style. KC Nwosu, in his review for The Escapist, similarly enjoyed the art style, which he believed fit the series better than those found in other entries. He regarded the movement and shooting mechanics as "adequate" but lamented that obtained weapons and upgrades "never reach the necessary level of absurdity to excite players to go another run". Cucchiarelli faulted several technical issues and saw the game as failing to be inventive, while Nwosu thought that the game was "incredibly small in scope and gives way to tedium much quicker than its replayable structure should allow".

Trivia

• Various enemy sounds from Serious Sam 1 can be heard when entering through the next part of a dungeon, most notably the idle sounds used by the Kleer Skeleton and Fiendian Reptiloid Demon.

External links

• Serious Sam: Tormental on the Steam Store
• Official website
• Serious Sam: Tormental on Croteam's website