Serious Sam’s Bogus Detour

A game by Crackshell for PC and Linux, originally released in 2017.

The Serious Sam series was born of an era where the popularity of first person shooters had crested, and developers began moving away from so-called “Doom clones” and into more story-driven content. Mindless corridor-crawling blastfests like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake were giving way to slower cinematic titles like Half-Life. Serious Sam represented a return to form, where blasting monsters – lots and lots of monsters – was the driving force of gameplay. But instead of tight quarters and dark winding hallways, the series offered wide open sunlit landscapes where enemies charged in from every direction.

Following Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, Serious Sam II, and a couple of third party console-exclusives, Serious Sam went away for a while… but he came back with a splash in Serious Sam 3: BFE, delivering on his tried and true formula with a seriously upgraded game engine. Concurrent with Sam’s triumphant return, publisher Devolver Digital commissioned a trio of indie games to herald his coming. These games were auto-runner Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack, turn-based RPG Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, and sidescrolling shooter Serious Sam: Double D.

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 2017, Crackshell, Devolver Digital, Linux, PC

Hammerwatch / Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition

A game by Crackshell for PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One, originally released in 2013, with the Anniversary Edition released in 2023.

Hammerwatch is a top-down dungeon crawler inspired by the likes of Gauntlet and more recent hack and slash titles like Diablo. You choose a character from one of four classes – paladin, wizard, ranger, and warlock – each of whom has different abilities. You can set out on your own, but like Gauntlet, the game is best enjoyed with friends, and you can gather a brood of up to 4 players for online or offline hacky-slashy action through the depths of Castle Hammerwatch.

At the start of the game, you select between three difficulty levels and pick a character from one of four classes. The character you choose will impact your starting health and mana levels, your offensive abilities, and the upgrades that are available to you.

The paladin is a melee fighter with high health and average mana. He has a short range sword attack and the ability to dash forward quickly to slice through groups of enemies.

The wizard has high mana and low health. This character can rapidly toss fireballs at short range and can emit a wide blast of fire to deal out fast damage to nearby groups of enemies, although this ability consumes mana quickly.

The ranger is average in health and mana but makes up for this with long range arrows which he can fire all the way across the screen (and even a little ways offscreen). His arrows also penetrate enemies, allowing him to wreak damage across long lines of foes, which is common given that most enemies hone in on your position once you are noticed. He can also drop a bomb to damage small groups of enemies.

Lastly there is the warlock who has the highest health of all classes and a sizeable mana pool as well, but has a very small melee attack. His magic attack allows him to toss balls of energy at a medium range.

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 2013, Crackshell, Linux, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One