Croteam | dam, Author at Croteam

The wait is finally over. The Talos Principle 2 is OUT NOW, and we can’t stress enough how excited we are to see you experience this new chapter in The Talos Principle series.

The original game launched in 2014 and completely shifted the perspective everyone had on Croteam. At that point, we stopped being developers who knew how to do shooters and not much else and proved to everyone that we could do much more. The Talos Principle is, to this day, our most critically acclaimed title, and we are confident that the sequel will do it justice.

We hope you enjoy playing it just as much as we enjoyed making it

Enjoy The Talos Principle 2 now!

Hi everyone,

The Talos Principle 2 launches in just under 24 hours, but we decided to publish the launch trailer today – because philosophy.

Check it out below and warm yourself up for the imminent launch tomorrow.

Hi everyone,
We are very happy today to announce The Talos Principle 2 is launching on November 2.

This is a very special project for us. For one, it allowed us to continue the story of The Talos Principle, a game that shaped us just as much as Serious Sam did. But also, The Talos Principle 2 started a new chapter for us, as we transitioned from developing our own technology to Unreal Engine, which allowed us to put 100% of our focus on creating the best gaming experience we can.

We cannot wait for everyone to hop in The Talos Principle 2 on November 2nd, and experience this new adventure with us.

You can pre-purchase The Talos Principle 2 now at 10% off, and if you own the original you can secure an additional discount.

After we announced Talos Principle 2 several weeks ago, we received a lot of inquiries about the gameplay itself – how will it look? And we listened – at Devolver Direct 2023 conference, we decided to show you all our cards. Here’s your first look at The Talos Principle 2 gameplay. Coming soon to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X.

And remember, the past is only the prologue…

Many years ago, an entire lifetime, one might say, we have bent and twisted and tickled your mind with our puzzler, The Talos Principle. The game was a substantial directional spin on everything we’ve done before. Making it, then seeing you play it, has been one of the most incredible experiences of our lives. This is why we are ecstatic today to announce The Talos Principle 2.

We hope you stay with us for another ride. It will be wild because the past is only the prologue. Much love from Croteam!

Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, a new stand-alone expansion to the world of the classic FPS series is finally available on consoles. Join the fight against Notorious Mental on a journey through the wild lands of Russia, and find your way through this lost chapter of Sam Stone’s adventures.

We are proud to announce that another Croteam co-production game has been fully released. Here is a note directly from developer Kris:

This has been a fun run, but like all things, every Early Access comes to an end. 
The full release of Serious Sam: Tormental introduces a new area called The Fortress that features new enemies and Elite variants, and Torments – special runs with preset starting weapons, powers, and conditions, with leaderboards for each. The update also includes dozens of new weapons, perks, powers, quests, music, and even a brand new character, Ugh Zan Jr!

We are incredibly thankful to everyone who helped us get this far through feedback and general support. You will forever be in our hearts.
Much love!
-kris

To check this hectic experience for yourself, head over to Steam store page:

Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is a stand-alone expansion to Serious Sam 4, working just as well whether you’ve played SS4. Siberian Mayhem cranks the action up to 11. It’s a hybrid experience ready to deliver explosive fun to fans of classics and the latest instalments to the series.

Siberian Mayhem is very important in another way. This game was designed, and its development has been led by some of the most talented members of the Serious Sam modding community, joined together under the banner of Timelock Studio. The team consists of well-respected names, including DedKadath, Asdolg, YaNexus, UrbanDeHuman, FreekNik, MintFritter, NSKuber, and Ar2R-devil-PiNKy, who worked closely together with Croteam to deliver absolute Mayhem. Here is a message of appreciation from the Timelock Studio team for the Serious Sam fan base:

To experience the “Mayhem” yourself, head over to Steam store page:

We are happy to inform you that Serious Sam 4 has blasted its way to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S!

The scale of chaos has reached unprecedented levels! The classic Serious Sam formula is revamped by putting an unstoppable arsenal up against an incredible number of enemies that requires players to circle-strafe and backpedal-blast their way out of impossible situations.

The iconic cast of alien invaders returns with some new reinforcements! Fight through unbelievable numbers of Mental’s minions, including the iconic Headless Kamikaze, Beheaded Rocketeer, Kleer, Scrapjack, Werebull, and Khnum! Square off against brand new enemies and towering monsters like the frantic Processed, repulsive Belcher, the hard-hitting Zealot, and more.

YES YES YES! Freshly released update for Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope brings you complete new episode – Shaanti! And three new game mechanics! And nine new enemies! And one big boss! And two new amazing weapons! And tons of stability fixes and optimizations! And new music! And… what are you exactly waiting for? Head on to Steam and get the game (or update it now in case you are already a lucky owner)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/465240/

So… almost a year after the release of The First Encounter, on February 5th, 2002 (though some shops in the UK started selling the game two weeks earlier!), we released Serious Sam: The Second Encounter worldwide. We worked even harder on that one, as TFE was received with such critical acclaim that we didn’t want to disappoint our fans, so the sequel had to be even better than the original.

Naturally, in order to fill shoes that big, we had to bring more people on board. The first two to join the party and increase our number to a hearty dozen were Ivan Mika and Nikola Mosettig. Ivan was hired as a level designer, while Nikola ended up in the programming department, though he wanted to be a designer as well… Fifteen years later, and they are both still with us, we just can’t get rid of them (and Nikola is still not a level designer) 🙂

Here is what they have to say:

“The first level I built was inspired by Teotihuacan, an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a huge flat valley. I was so excited that I was given a chance to work on it, that I just worked and worked and worked on it, day and night until it ended up being so big, we had to split it into three levels in the end (which was exactly 1/4 of the full game)! It also contained some experiments I did with jump pads and gravity that turned out to be some of the most memorable experiences in the game (and probably the most difficult and hated ones).”

Ivan Mika, Level designer for TSE (today: Level design lead)

“During the development of TSE, we had some issues with framerate, mostly in our newly built particle system. I managed to single-handedly DOUBLE our framerate just by deleting a duplicate line of code that was making everything render twice (which I introduced into code in the first place)!”

Nikola Mosettig, Content programmer (today: CIO)

By the end of the development cycle, we had to make decisions regarding retail box. Our publisher sent us box cover art, and boy, we had so much to say.  Turned out we were short on time and most of our remarks ended up in “can’t be done now” category.

Sometime in that period, we managed to rent a much bigger office, where we had so much space that we didn’t know what to do with it, but we knew we liked it! So we brought even more people aboard, to prepare working on XBOX edition that will include both TFE and TSE. But that is another story…

Here are few pics and concept art from that era, hope you’ll enjoy them

Our friends at Autodesk sat down with us and asked as a ton of questions. Most of them were really serious 🙂

You can read part I of our little interview here: http://area.autodesk.com/customer-stories/serious-sam-vr-pt-i