The Prophets of Sam get together with us and give us the lowdown on the highly anticipated Serious Sam Forever.

We scored some exclusive video of an epic 100 bot mega knife fight. Read to the bottom to see it.

1. CGI: Hello guys, thank you for taking a moment to talk to us about your upcoming game, Serious Sam Forever. Could you introduce yourselves briefly, and tell us about your background as game developers?

MS: Hi, my name is Maarten Staa, I am 19 years old and live in The Netherlands. I’m currently doing a study called “Game Design and Development,” which is currently in its final stages. I’m one of the programmers for Prophets of Sam, and I also fulfill the role of Technical Director.

NB: Hi. I’m Nathan Brown and I’m the Lead Programmer for Prophets of Sam. I am 42 years old, live in the United States and have been programming for 6 years. This is my 5th project for the Serious Sam game series. I created a Dedicated Server tool for Serious Sam 2. I’ve written many applications outside of my own Serious Sam projects, and some related to them, such as an installer and mod launcher for InSamnity! 2. I’ve also done one mod for Doom 3 titled Doppelganger.

YS: Hi, I am Yuriy Sountsov, I am 17 years old and I live in the United States. I am the Lead Level Designer, a Visual Effects Engineer, and one of the Video Directors for Prophets of Sam.

2. CGI: Tell us a little bit about your team, how many of you are there, where you all hail from, what is your favorite food item, and do you all have hot single sisters to introduce to us ?

YS: Haha, I don’t have a sister. As for food, I prefer chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

MS: I concur with Yuriy. Chocolate is awesome.

NB: We are 6 members strong/weak, peanut M&M’s rock, and my sister is married, sorry guys ; )

MS: Oh, yeah. My sister is 12, so sorry guys…



3. CGI: We at Casual Game Informer are all about beer, well, games too, but we love beer. What are your current favorite beers?

NB: I’d have to say my favorite is Labbat Blue, I love a good pilsner.

MS: I’m almost afraid to answer, but I don’t really like beer. Am I going to get kicked out now? I like wine though, maybe that’ll do. There’s not really one brand or type I stick to, but I guess Riesling is one of the more well known examples of wine I drink.

YS: My personal favorite is dihydrogen monoxide.

MS: Hmm, good old H2O. I drink loads of that stuff.

4. CGI: Could you please tell our readers who may not be familiar with the Serious Sam franchise a little bit about what it is and how Serious Sam Forever will tie into it?

YS: The Serious Sam games are true classics in the style of Duke Nukem and Doom where you just shoot everything, except that in Serious Sam there were a lot more baddies to shoot, more weapons to use, and bigger, badder bosses. Serious Sam Forever is an effort to recapture that legacy in a total conversion.

MS: Serious Sam is an arcade style over the top first person shooter, originally created by Croteam, a Zagreb based game development studio. The first game, or rather the first half of the first game, was released in 2001 as Serious Sam: The First Encounter. The second game, aptly called Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, was released in 2002. These two encounters were re-united into a single game that was released on the Xbox platform in 2004 by Gotham Games. Croteam, meanwhile, worked on a third game titled Serious Sam 2 (a different game from The Second Encounter). Serious Sam 2 was released late 2005. Serious Sam Forever is a total conversion reimagining of The First Encounter for Serious Sam 2.

NB: Serious Sam is an action packed FPS that came on the market back in 2001 and gave the game industry a kick in the pants with its intensity and the amount of enemies they put on the screen. Serious Sam Forever is a total conversion modification based on the Serious Engine 2 that adds tons of new features to the game and still stays true what Serious Sam is all about.



5. CGI: Tell us a little more about Serious Sam Forever, will this be a standalone title? A total conversion? An expansion pack?

MS: Serious Sam Forever is a total conversion for Serious Sam 2, meaning you will have to own Serious Sam 2 to be able to play Serious Sam Forever. Serious Sam Forever, like Serious Sam 2, is going to run on Windows and Linux.

6. CGI: What new features can we expect in Serious Sam Forever, anything we have yet to see in previous Serious Sam games?

YS: Dune Buggies! Oh, wait, I shouldn’t have said that….

NB: We’ve done something completely new and have implemented a Generic Game-mode system that allows map makers to create their own unique game modes. Also, there will be multiplayer bot support for Deathmatch-style modes. We currently have working Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Arcade modes, just to name a few.

7. CGI: Any new weapons? How about a flaming poop gun?

MS: Hey, there’s an idea! (Writes down and sketches…) Sorry, no flaming poop guns or anything like that for now. But who knows what we’ll come up with in the future?

YS: However, for those who played Serious Sam 2 and missed weapons like the Knife and Laser Gun, we are bringing those back.

NB: Nothing new yet in the weapons department, but we are bringing back an oldie but goodie: the Knife.



8. CGI: Come on, you got to have new enemies at least, what are we talking? Little annoying jar-jar things? Nasty spidery looking things? Angry badgers?

YS: We have some all-new special surprise boss monster encounters prepared, as well as…

MS: We have a small team. So we are still working on bringing back all the enemies from The First Encounter for the blast from the past that you’d expect. However, there’s already some pretty nasty stuff waiting for you that you have not seen yet. What lurks under the Tomb of Ramses… *gniffelen*

NB: Enemies? We need enemies? Oh shit…

9. CGI: What kind of multiplayer is being added to the game? What can we expect?

YS: One word: awesomeness. I’ll let Nathan explain.

MS: Of course, we have Deathmatch and Cooperative modes, which are the two game-modes you’ve all seen in previous Sam games. I will also tell you that we are adding a Capture the Flag mode, which works pretty awesome with our bots. But we’re not stopping at that, not at all…. (mumbles incomprehensibly)

NB: In multiplayer you can expect to see some Serious Bot Action^TM?. We are making it so that it will only take a small amount of time to create a simple new game mode. You can expect to see at least 4 or 5 game modes ship with Serious Sam Forever all with the ability to add Player Bots.

10. CGI: Serious Sam is noted for having some pretty insane boss levels. Any insight on what we can expect with Serious Sam Forever? Will there be giant angry badger for example?

YS: Insane? Oh you’ll get insane…. (maniacal laugh)

MS: Badgers again? I think I heard that one a few questions back. Anyway, The First Encounter had one of the most awesome boss battles in existence with the four handed Ugh Zan III. That will make a return, of course, and I can tell you that it’s going to look awesome with present day graphics. In addition, there’s going to be a few extra unexpected surprises while you play through the game.

NB: Bosses? We need bosses? Oh shit…



11. CGI: The Serious Sam Forever teaser claims that we will “be blasting through more enemies than we have ever seen before”, could you please elaborate a bit on this, just how hardcore is this gonna be? Are we talking Starcraft with a Korean playing then zerg rushing you?

MS: Huh, who put that line in the teaser vid? I know I didn’t…

NB: Enemies? We need enemies? ….

MS: Well, hardware has advanced a lot since the late 90’s, early 00’s, so that allows us to pull off a lot more than Croteam was able to in 2001. We are not trying to beat the Insamnity mod but you can rest assured that it’s going to keep you on the edge of your seat. Crank up those stereos, everyone!

NB: There will be enemies, lots of enemies; there is no doubt about that. How far will we push it? You will have to wait and see for yourself.

12. CGI: Unlike its mocked namesake, Serious Sam Forever won’t be vaporware will it? Is there a release date you can announce yet?

YS: When the prophets will it. (weird laughter in the background…)

MS: Of course Serious Sam Forever is not going to be vaporware (I’ll get you for even suggesting that!). No release date yet that I can reveal, though. Uhm, when it’s done? Things don’t move very fast with a team as small as ours, so you should understand it’s hard to estimate how much time we need. Speaking of which, visit the Jobs page on our website! (http://prophets-of-sam.com/contact.php?do=JobApp)

NB: Release? We have to release it? Oh shit…

13. CGI: Thank you all for taking a small time out to answer our questions, is there anything else we didn’t cover that you would like to share with our readers?

MS: Hmm, I think we mentioned chocolate? Nope, guess that was about it. You’re quite welcome! Thanks for having us.

NB: It’s been fun, thanks for having us. Long live Sam!

YS: Long live Sam!

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