Serious Sam: Shatterverse Mental's Horde in Shatterverse

Serious Sam: Shatterverse is a horde game wearing a roguelite loop. Behaviour Interactive and Devolver Digital shipped the $19.99 premium 1–5 player co-op FPS on August 31, 2026, Unreal Engine 5, no microtransactions. The enemies are the series’ greatest hits plus a few new bruises: Gnaars, Kleers, Beheaded Kamikazes and Rocketeers, Harpies, Arachnoids, Lava Golems, Werebulls, and elites whose only joke is extra hit points. A run still lasts about 45 minutes — three biomes, three arenas, lieutenant on the third — so you will meet this roster nine times a night, not once.

This page is the trash-to-tank list. Lieutenant homework stays on the boss guide. Gun choice for each body type sits on the weapons guide. Geography — which tile hides hoppers in foliage and which balcony belongs to Arachnoids — sits on the biomes and anomalies guide. The Xbox reveal trailer on this page is the silhouette reel. It does not teach you to leave a Gnaar at execute range.

Steam sat Mixed at launch, about 47% of roughly 301 reviews. One concrete complaint is that later difficulties mostly inflate HP and elite spawn chance instead of teaching new tells. Believe that, then still learn the old tells. Elites do not get a new AI; they get a longer health bar.

Gnaars, the one-eyed fodder

Gnaars are the one-eyed pests. They fill jungles, they fill temples, they exist so you have something to melee-execute when a vial is two arenas away. They punch, they rush, and they die if you look at them. That is the point. One-Eyed Pest Control asks for 500 Gnaar kills. You will get there by playing, not by farming a closet, as long as you stop ignoring the small ones to spray a lieutenant.

Leave wounded Gnaars alive on purpose. Execute healing is the main regen in Shatterverse. There is no passive tank. Weaken, walk in, melee. In co-op, a barely-alive Gnaar is a first-aid kit for a teammate who just stood up. Details on that social contract are on the co-op guide. If an Act II anomaly explodes corpses, Gnaars become chain bombs and stop being food. Skip that modifier until you can clear without the snack.

Serious Sam Shatterverse Xbox reveal trailer

Kleers

Kleers are the skeletal runners that made old Sam games feel unfair in doorways. Playtests made them harder to evade, and that change shipped. You do not out-walk a Kleer pack on a straight line. Dash through the swipe, do not backpedal into a wall, and delete the extras before you tunnel the big silhouette. Kleer God is the boss-scale version; the fodder version is still how most Serious wipes start, because people save shotgun shells for a Highlander who is two biomes away.

Strafe guns beat scoped pride. The Thompson is honest. A sniper you unlocked with 150 Catalyst Orbs is how you eat a bone sweep. If the pack is mixed with Gnaars, execute the Gnaars between Kleer dashes. The skeleton does not heal you as reliably as the one-eyed pest.

Beheaded Kamikazes and Rocketeers

Beheaded Kamikazes are the scream. You hear them, you look, you do not walk toward the sound. Dash past, shotgun, execute the leftovers. Walking into a Kamikaze because you were reloading the Desert Eagle is a first-hour problem the getting started guide already yelled about.

Beheaded Rocketeers hang back and punish people who stand still to “aim better.” Keep moving. The SBC Cannon’s playtest fix — shots no longer bouncing off Rocketeer rockets — is a reminder that this species exists to eat projectiles you thought were clever. Unlock that cannon later; until then, strafe the rocket and delete the beheaded before the next volley. Harpies will occupy the same vertical band, so do not stare at one threat.

Harpies and Arachnoids

Harpies are the air tax. Playtests cut their counts in some encounters, which shipped, but “some” is not “none.” Look up. A jungle canopy and a castle balcony both hide them. Double jump is bait if the tell is a dive; horizontal dash is the cleaner dodge. Shotgun when they commit, Desert Eagle when they hover at the edge of the arena. Do not dump a minigun spool into one Harpy while ten Gnaars chew your ankles.

Arachnoids are the laser balcony. Playtests made groups less laser-accurate, which is a mercy, not an invitation to stand in a line. Spread the squad. Break line of sight on pillars if the biome gave you any. If it did not, cone-strafe and do not stack five Sams in the same beam. Long-range Arachnoids are why launch players complained about fighting a lava monster with a short Thompson — the gun plan is on the weapons guide, but the immediate fix is cover and dash, not a refund.

Werebulls, Lava Golems, and elites

Werebulls are the charge. You do not tank a bull. Dash off the line, shotgun the pass, execute something smaller afterward because the bull itself is a greedy heal. Reloading during the charge is how you donate a run.

Lava Golems come in small, medium, and lieutenant sizes, and all of them are fire-immune. That is a shipped playtest rule, not a rumor. Flame affixes and lava-looking toys do not farm extra damage here. Shoot the body with something that is not fire, keep moving off leftover puddles, and treat the small golems as floor denial with legs. The boss version is on the boss guide under Lava Golem; Not Too Hot To Handle is the achievement for that fight, not for igniting a hopper.

Elites are the Mixed-review punchline. Later acts and higher difficulties raise elite spawn chance and HP. They look like the same Kleer or Gnaar with a thicker bar. They do not earn a new paragraph of mechanics. Burn them with the gun you can strafe, execute the fodder around them, and do not pretend an elite Gnaar is a sixth lieutenant.

Execute healing, density, and what not to invent

Healing is melee-execute first, vials and vending machines second. Launch players measured the snack shrinking as you climb: about 15 health on Serious, 10 on Mental, 5 on Shattered. Big bodies do not drop a bigger meal. A Werebull and a Gnaar pay the same execute. That is why leaving three Gnaars alive is smarter than punching one bull in a panic.

Density is the other half. Five-player lobbies multiply the scream. Solo is the better teacher because nobody else is stealing your execute target. Offline works. Co-op is optional. If the horde feels like a CPU test, that is Unreal Engine 5 drawing hundreds of meshes; the system requirements page is the hardware desk, not this one.

Kill totals matter for the trophy hunter. M.E.S. wants 10,000 kills. Dirty Hands Sam wants 50 executes. One-Eyed Pest Control wants 500 Gnaars. Those numbers happen if you play the nine-arena loop instead of resetting at biome two. The full list is on the achievements page. This page only tells you which body to leave breathing.

Name the enemy before you blame the shotgun. A Kamikaze is a sound cue. A Kleer is a dash exam. An Arachnoid is a height exam. A Lava Golem is a fire-immune floor exam. An elite is a longer version of whoever it copied. Learn those four sentences on Serious, in the biomes you actually have unlocked, and the lieutenant at the end of the tile stops feeling like it spawned from nowhere.