Serious Sam: The Third Encounter Brings Back the Series' Classic Era

Devolver Digital has announced Serious Sam: The Third Encounter, a new title presented as a direct sequel to the 2002 shooter, as reported by Eurogamer Spain. The name is no accident: the Sam Stone series kicked off with The First Encounter and continued with The Second Encounter, so this announcement points straight back to the foundational era that many players remember as the purest in the franchise.

The news matters because Serious Sam is one of the pillars of the arcade shooter: huge arenas, endless hordes, an over-the-top arsenal and zero narrative pretensions. At a time when the genre is split between extraction, battle royale and cinematic campaigns, a publisher like Devolver betting on reviving that formula sends a clear message about where the series wants to look. For a community like ours, used to fast shooters and cooperative play, this is an announcement worth paying attention to.

What you need to know

• Official announcement: Devolver Digital has confirmed that Serious Sam: The Third Encounter exists.
• Direct sequel: the game continues the story of the 2002 shooter, in other words the classic "Encounter" line.
• Source of the information: everything published so far comes from the Eurogamer Spain report.
• Still unknown: the available information gives no release date, platforms or price, so nothing should be taken for granted.

From the classic Encounters to this comeback

To understand the weight of the announcement, it helps to remember what the first Serious Sam games were. Croteam built a shooter that ran against the trend of its time: no dark corridors or ambitious scripts, but gigantic open spaces where the player faced dozens of enemies at once. The headless Kamikazes screaming as they run at you, the bulls charging in herds and the Kleer leaping in from everywhere became icons of the genre.

After that era, the series went in different directions. There were numbered entries with more varied approaches, some better received than others, and spin-offs of every kind. What sets the "Encounters" apart from the rest is precisely that feeling of direct, no-frills design. The fact that the new title takes the Third Encounter label instead of a number suggests, at least on paper, that the goal is to recapture that spirit rather than reinvent the franchise yet again.

What it could mean for the community

Serious Sam has always had a very active base of co-op players and speedrunners. The cooperative mode of the classic entries, with several players taking on massive waves, is one of the reasons the series is still alive on servers and in small communities. If The Third Encounter keeps that structure, it could become a strong candidate for squad nights, difficulty challenges and races to finish levels in the shortest time possible.

Our take

Here at the Underworld Lordz editorial team, we welcome the announcement with excitement, but also with a healthy dose of skepticism. Calling something a "direct sequel" to a 2002 game is a very specific promise: the audience celebrating it does not want a modern reinterpretation with progression systems and season passes, it wants arenas, hordes and an unforgiving pace. If Devolver and the studio behind it understand that, they have a hit on their hands. If they use the name as a nostalgic hook to sell something else, the community will notice in the first demo.

For competitive players, what really matters are details we still do not know: how online co-op will work, whether there will be versus modes, how stable the netcode will be, and whether support for mods and custom maps, which has given the series so much life, will remain. A Serious Sam without community tools would be a wasted opportunity, and leaving them out at launch would be a mistake.

For content creators, on the other hand, the potential is obvious. Few shooters generate clips as spectacular as a horde of Kamikazes exploding in a chain reaction or a room full of enemies falling to a cannon. If the game is generous with visual chaos and allows smooth cooperative matches, it is going to be a goldmine for streams and challenge videos. That said, we ask the publisher to pin down dates and platforms soon: announcing without details builds expectations that are hard to sustain later.

What do you think?

The series is looking back to its roots, and that could be the best news of the year for classic shooter fans or a risky bet in a market very different from 2002. Do you think Serious Sam: The Third Encounter should stay faithful to the design of the original Encounters, or would you rather it brought in modern ideas? Tell us in the team chat or on our Discord.