Serious Sam: The First Encounter is a 2001 first-person shooter game developed by Croteam and published by Gathering of Developers. It is the first in the Serious Sam series. The game follows the soldier Sam "Serious" Stone, who is sent back in time to ancient Egypt in 1378 BCE to uncover information about the technologically advanced civilisation of the Sirians that could help humanity survive the attacks of extraterrestrial forces in the 22nd century. As Sam, the player traverses linear levels, either enclosed or set on open plains, and battles increasingly large waves of enemies with an expanding arsenal. During gameplay, the player can pick up new weapons and replenishment for ammunition and health, as well as review strategic information. In multiplayer, the game has two deathmatch modes and cooperative play for the single-player campaign.
Development began in 1996, after Croteam had moved away from creating games for the since-defunct Amiga family of home computers. Unable to afford a commercial game engine, the studio developed S-Cape3D alongside In the Flesh, a story-driven first-person shooter inspired by Half-Life. This concept was abandoned as Croteam's chief executive officer, Roman Ribarić, considered it not accomplishable due to the team's size. In 1999, he and programmer Alen Ladavac devised the name "Serious Sam" and a new narrative. Having little funding and no success in finding a publisher, Croteam turned to licensing out the engine (since renamed Serious Engine) and released a vertical slice as a demo in May 2000. The latter saw the game attain much popularity, especially after Erik Wolpaw interviewed Ribarić for the website Old Man Murray, and Croteam eventually signed a publishing agreement with On Deck Interactive, the budget-price games division of Gathering of Developers. After the division was shut down, Serious Sam was moved over to Gathering of Developers and released on 21 March 2001.
The First Encounter was followed up by Serious Sam: The Second Encounter in February 2002. Both games have been combined into one in several packages, including an Xbox port released by Gotham Games in November 2002. With the publisher Devolver Digital, Croteam developed a remake, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, that was first released in November 2009 and later brought to Xbox 360, Stadia, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. A virtual reality port of that remake, Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter, was released in March 2017.
Serious Sam: The First Encounter is a first-person shooter with an optional third-person perspective.[1][2] As Sam "Serious" Stone, the player traverses fifteen mostly linear levels.[1][3] Two of them are hidden levels.[4] Some maps are set on open plains while others are enclosed.[3][5] Several props, including torches that act as light sources, are destructible.[6][7] Large numbers of enemies of varying sizes attack Sam simultaneously with increasing difficulty.[1][5][8] There are nineteen enemy variants.[9][10] Several approach Sam in a straight line and others fire projectiles, incentivising circle strafing.[3][8][11] The Beheaded Kamikaze approaches Sam quickly and blows himself up once close enough.[3] Foes may appear, in waves or individually, as the player passes triggers within each level.[1][8] Others are hidden behind large structures like walls and hills.[12] All enemies emit sounds that aid the player determine their type and direction of attack.[1][12] Some spaces are arenas that need to be cleared of enemies before the player can proceed.[1][8] Certain rooms need to be unlocked by pressing buttons, pulling levers, or collecting and using keys.[1][5] Some levels feature bosses, many have hidden items and areas.[5][8]
The game contains ten weapons.[9][10] By default, Sam is equipped with a combat knife and a revolver with unlimited ammunition.[1][13] A second revolver enables dual wielding, and other weapons include a shotgun with a double-barrelled variant, Thompson submachine gun, minigun, laser gun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, and handheld cannon.[1][2] Apart from the revolvers and shotguns, none of the weapons need to be reloaded.[14] The player may replenish ammunition and health, as well as acquire new weapons, via collectibles, though some act as triggers that spawn enemies.[3][11][15] Eliminating foes increases the player's score, which is tracked by a scoreboard.[11][16] The game includes quick saves and the ability to record gameplay demos.[8][16] A specialised interface provides information about encountered enemies, weapons, and locations, as well as statistics and strategic clues.[16][17][18] The player can choose from five difficulty settings, which affect the enemies' damage and count, as well as Sam's movement speed and fire rate.[6][19]
Sam arrives in 1378 BCE, at the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari. His Neurotronically Implanted Combat Situation Analyzer (NETRICSA) seeks him to uncover knowledge about the life of the Sirians in ancient Egypt in the two centres of power: Memphis and Thebes. However, Thebes has been magically locked down since a riot instigated by Memphis rulers, wherein these rulers had stolen the sign of Amun-Ra, an item of great value but unclear purpose. NETRICSA guides Sam to retrieve four magical elements that would enable his entry into Thebes. He finds the first to have been removed from the temple of Thutmose I and instead obtains it at the entry of the tomb of Ramesses III, as well as the second at its exit. Sam continues through the Valley of the Kings, acquiring the third element in the Chambers of Horus and the fourth in a shrine at a nearby oasis.
Croteam announced Flesh, a multiplayer first-person shooter, in September 1996, planning to release it in February 1997.[31] The name was later changed to In the Flesh, with the engine called S-Cape3D.[32] Ribarić and Davor Hunski designed all enemies, with the Beheaded Kamikaze and Sirian Werebull, which remained in the finished game, among the first elements to be created in 1996.[30][33] Dinko Pavičić joined Croteam during the development and created all characters' textures. Ribarić also worked on the game's sound design, initially having the Beheaded Kamikaze shout "banzai" while approaching the player, though this was later changed to a generic scream in case Croteam would be working with Japanese partners.[33] That scream is voiced by Ribarić, who recreated it from a stock sound effect.[34]
For In the Flesh, the team initially devised a dark, story-driven game, later inspired by Half-Life. However, Ribarić believed the team was too small to accomplish such a complicated game and chose to scrap the story.[35][36] In 1999, he and Ladavac instead came up with the name "Serious Sam".[37][38] Ladavac, a fan of science fiction, wrote a new narrative around it, drawing inspiration from writers like Isaac Asimov, Roger Zelazny, J. R. R. Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Asprin.[22][38] Despite objections from other team members, including Hunski (who was undergoing his compulsory military service in the Armed Forces of Croatia at the time) and Sekulić, Ribarić held on to the name and it became a better fit as the game progressed away from its former story and into brighter, colourful environments.[35][36] S-Cape3D was consequently renamed Serious Engine, its level editor became Serious Editor, and the 3D modelling software was named Serious Modeler.[33][39] Serious Editor was designed as a WYSIWYG tool so the team, mostly comprising programmers, could create levels as efficiently as possible.[40] Davor Tomičić designed roughly sixty levels with various environments for experimentation.[41] He found that vast, flat planes topped with large structures like pyramids worked well as levels, although they pushed the limits of the engine.[42] Other themes included the Lava Planet, Water Planet, and Ice Planet.[33] In 1999, Damjan Mravunac joined Croteam as a composer before also replacing Ribarić as the sound designer.[42] He ended up remaking most of Ribarić's sounds.[43] His primary influences were Doom and Quake for the sounds, and he took musical inspiration from the games Agony and Lost Patrol, as well as film scores from composers like John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Ennio Morricone.[44] Both were recored using a Sound Blaster Live! sound card, which Mravunac chose after facing driver issues with other cards.[43][44] Croteam then designed the Dynamic Music Control System that would change between three versions of a song during gameplay: The "peace" music outside of battles, "combat" upon encountering enemies, and "war" when the player faces many foes.[43][45]
According to Erik Wolpaw of the website Old Man Murray, the demo's release received no coverage from the video game press, even after he was the first to break the story with a short news piece, which led him to conduct and publish an interview with Ribarić.[54] Additionally, the site featured a humorous review model that rated games by the time it takes from starting the game to finding a destructible crate. Unlike most games the site reviewed, the Serious Sam demo features no crates, earning it a rare positive review. According to Hunski, the team had forgotten to include crates and had not left them out deliberately. The coverage from Old Man Murray increased the game's popularity and the demo was downloaded about 1 million times over the summer.[27][55] CNET Gamecenter later named Test 1 the best download of that timespan.[56] As some players reported that the game was too difficult on its easiest setting, Croteam toned it down and added the even easier "Tourist" mode.[19] The coverage and positive reception to the demo enabled Croteam to resume publishing negotiations.[23][25] The studio was approached by some major publishers, including Gathering of Developers (a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive), which had taken note of the demo.[26][46] In July 2000, Croteam agreed to a publishing deal with On Deck Interactive, a division of Gathering of Developers run by Robert Westmoreland that released budget-priced games.[57] The publisher initially expected the game to be released in February 2001.[50] The success also led Croteam to lay aside all plans of handling Serious Sam solely as a marketing demonstration for Serious Engine.[58] In retrospect, Ribarić said that, without the interview that led to the publishing deal, Croteam would not have survived.[59]
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