Double D Pompeii and Secrets

There's not much left to do on Serious Sam Double D.. and then there's a lot left to do. We're currently finishing up the last area, which is actually two distinct envrionments. The time period and region for both environments is Pompeii around 79AD just before Mount Vesuvius erupts.

The first area is an exterior view of the city of Pompeii with the volcano in the background. And *naturally* the second area is in the volcano itself! Turns out that the evil Mental's henchmen have built massive power sucking devices which hover over the lava and aborb the heat, transferring the energy through time to the Big Bad himself! Sam's job isn't so much to disable the devices, but rather make his way through this area to the final boss.

Early construction of the Pompeii exterior area. Art is still being tweaked, plus there's no cool enemies shown yet!

Currently I'm finishing up art I had roughed in before, Hamdija is still working on music tracks, Richard is coding background effects, and AJ is tweaking story elements and dialog.

What's in the Pompeii area? Well not to spoil everything but the enemies in final levels are more consistently BIG. As in, giant, walking caterpillar as big a building BIG. A caterpillar that stands up and acts like a massive wall. And has 3 different guns. And has a detachable head. Yeah, it all makes sense in the game. Serious sense.


Serious Sam games are famous for the fun secrets, and we're working to make some great ones. We wanted to make sure you get the most enjoyment out of those unique secrets. To that end, we're also implementing a special Secrets Menu. Instead of the typical version of completing a level and seeing you found 4/7 secrets, now you'll be able to look any time at this menu and see any level you've been in, and all the secrets you've found. There will be the full name and full description of each secret.

Secret cave from Serious Sam The First Encounter

And we're even looking at a way for you to visit them! For instance, if you find one of the 'comedy secrets' and really want to show a friend, you can just open the Secrets Menu, find that secret and click 'Visit' and you'll be loaded into the level just before the funnies. Still working out the kinks but so far it's pretty cool.

And then there's installation, localization and all that fun stuff. Oh and still the final boss. So we're close, but still a little ways to go. But we're getting there!

Serious Press and Help

E3 Press

Serious Sam Double D box art

E3 is over and Double D wowed press all around!
Check out this in-depth coverage from Dealspwn: http://www.dealspwn.com/sam-double-preview-guns-tits-corpse-piling-63785
"By far the most surreal moment came later in the demo when Sam found himself mired in a mysterious sticky fluid. “It’s maple syrup, dude,” explained Fouts… as an enormous stack of pancakes studded with vuvuzelas leapt into centre stage. This hilarious monstrosity made me burst out laughing thanks to the sheer unexpected sillyness of it all (and its adorable blueberry eyeballs)"

And a great look at the game from The Escapist:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110973-E3-Serious-Sam-Double-D
"Double D starts in Egypt, but features other level types such as the prehistoric Nova Scotia that features dinosaurs and tar pits. Sam can hop on the backs of flying dinos to find secrets, and will have to take down giant spineasauruses while avoiding their bites."

I've put together the proper Serious Sam Double D webpage with tons more press, check it out!

 Little Hearts Matter

 In other news, gamer Isaac Hume has asked for help for his charity of choice Little Hearts Matter.


From Isaac:
"This charity helped save my nephew’s life when he was born with a portion of his heart missing and also helped to rehabilitate him into the healthy toddler that he is today.

In order to raise the donation I’m doing what I know how to do best. With the help of a couple of friends, I’ll be running a 24 hour livestream on 15^th July, playing and talking about games. My three friends and I will play games, encouraging people watching the stream to get involved, play multiplayer with us and donate to a worthy cause that helps save lives."

Little Hearts Matter treat conditions like Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). While rare, the condition is fatal unless treated. Learn more about it here: http://www.lhm.org.uk/

Here's the Isaac's donation page for Little Hearts Matter: www.justgiving.co.uk/temporalcortex


And here's the entertainment for the live streaming page for July 15th.
www.justin.tv/temporalcortex

Make sure to check it out and donate to a worthy cause!

Serious Shirts

Speaking of donations, Isaac asked MBG for some promotional help. We're donating a Serious Sam Double D shirt as seen here.

The shirt has the SSDD box art featuring the Gun Stacker on the front, large. On the back, there's a small Mommy's Best Games logo. All printing on cheery, Sun Beam Yellow!

We're only doing very limited prints of the shirts and one will be given away on Isaac's live streaming show on July 15th!

If you don't feel so lucky and would simply like to buy one for $25 + shipping, email me: nathan ((at)) mommysbestgames ((dot) com.

Double D at E3 2011

 There will be an all-new, polished, playable build of Serious Sam Double D at E3 2011 available in a behind-the-scenes capacity. What does that mean?

If you're a reporter-type just email me (Nathan) and I'll find a time slot for you to play the game.
We'll have for you some snappy demo sequences pulled from over a dozen levels of over-the-top, gun-stacking gameplay, plus some E3-special screenshots just for you.


If you won't be attending E3, don't fret! Those journalists at the show will be working hard to bring you awesome preview impressions and previously mentioned game shots.

In the meantime enjoy these screens!

Shooting up some Chimputees in the Amethystine Depths

Gorey globs gliding through the air in a challenge level.

As for actual development, we're currently adding all the polish points like robotic menu display cores and attenuating musical transitions--no Serious game's complete without 'em!

Gunstacker Configured for Action

Serious Sam Double D is a 2D side-scrolling version of the popular and looney Serious Sam franchise, and will be ready for you to play later this summer on your PC!

When designing Double D, rather than dump all of Croteam's original guns and start from scratch I decided it'd be fun to take on the biggest of Mental's baddies with all your guns blazing at once. The way you'll get to do that is with the Gun Stacker system.

A Gun Stacker connector arm

Hidden throughout all sorts of sneaky places you'll find a Gun Stacker connector piece. This is a small robotic arm, that when applied, not only allows you to hold an extra gun, it also connects the firing of the second gun to the primary gun. (Squeeze the trigger and all your guns start firing, throttled only by refire and reload times.)

Thompson Submachine gun

You'll collect not only the classic Shotgun, Tommy Gun, and Rocket Launcher from Serious Sam, you'll get to collect MULTIPLE OF EACH GUN.

You know how it's fun to a hidden rocket launcher early in the game, but when you finally, "officially" are given the rocket launcher it's sort of a let down, because.. well.. you already have it!

Say good by the to that sorry feeling! If you scour a level for secrets, find the Tommy Gun early, then you not only have the Tommy Gun, you'll have the chance to collect up to four Tommy Guns! That goes for each weapon type--there are 4 of each hidden throughout Serious Sam Double D.

XL4 Lasergun

So now you've got tons of guns, and tons of connectors what do you do with them? Get all crafty and start sticking them together into various, explosive combinations!

Here is an early peak at the Gun Stacker configuration menu (Bear with me, I'll try to make it sexier before the game's done).

Above is a "standard" view of a quick select. You can see the Machine Pistol, the Shotgun, the Tommy Gun, and the Grenade Launcher. (And an extra Tommy Gun in your Inventory at the bottom, but that's for later!)

To stack your guns all you have to do is select a gun like the Shotgun here, move it over that stack and press the button again to confirm the Stack. Done! Super stack-a-ola, Shotgun-Tommy duo ready. But wait--we've got more connectors (upper right), looks like we have 2 of 3 still left! Can't let those got to waste.

The Machine Pistol has infinite ammo, so whatever stack you put that it in, it sort of gets a 'free boost' in as much as that gun doesn't reload and can't run out of ammunition. Type II Machine Pistol's hidden throughout the game are very special and very challenging to obtain!

Let's just go full epicurean and stack 2 Tommys, a Shotgun and the Machine Pistol in one heap. We've exhausted our connectors, but it'll be pretty powerful.

But our Grenade Launcher is looking lonely. If we select it and try to add it to the stack it won't work as we need an extra connector.

But we can remove a Tommy gun from the other stack and put it on the Grenade launcher. That's a nice combo as it covers you with fast, repeating fire from the Tommy, which fills in the gaps on the very powerful, but slow-to-reload Grenade Launcher.

What's all this look like? Let's take a peak!

Click to zoom in!

Here Sam is blasting a Minor Biomechanoid in the face with the Shotgun/Tommy/Pistol stack, while a mass of seething Gnarr and Kleer claw at him from behind.

So that's all fine and good--the sort of elementary Gun Stacking your little brother might do. But what kind of disgusting, orgiastic displays of male bravado are in store for those who able to survive later into the game?

Here we have a gun collection as you'll see further into the game. You've got 8 connectors to play around with and a silly amount of firepower.

And here's Sam with a real Gun Stack taking on more classic Sam baddies:

Now why would you need all these guns you might ask? First of all when dozens of slathering one-eyed Gnarr are climbing over their dead brethren trying to rip your face off, the more bullets you can shoot, the better. And secondly, you noticed the big blue alien about 5 times the size of Sam? He's called a Minor Biomechanoid for a reason.

That's it for now, but be ready as we've got lots of fresh, new, gigantic enemies in Serious Sam Double D, that will require every bit of firepower you can Stack together.
Now, back to the game-making!

UPDATE: Here are some new screenshots of the Gunstacker menu system:

Here are some gun stacks, in the new menu. 

And here's a *lot* of guns in the new menu.

Remember you can reconfigure your stacks any time! Just make sure you have found enough connectors.

Serious Sam Double D

Our new game, Serious Sam Double D, is part of Croteam's Serious Sam Indie Series created to help promote the new 3D game called Serious Sam 3 BFE due out later this summer!
Read more about the other games featured.

UPDATE: Here's the link for the up-to-date main page for Serious Sam Double D.

(Original post for the announcement follows:)

Once again, Sam ‘Serious’ Stone must use the Time-Lock to travel through time and destroy the enemies of humanity’s past, in order to save its future. But since his last outing, 2 important new relics have been discovered: the Gun Stacker and the Porta Pad. Only Sam is serious enough – and crazy enough – to use this untested technology.

All that stands between victory and annihilation is a man with a T-shirt and jeans… and a great big pile of guns.

• One gun sometimes not enough? Two still too wimpy? Try firing all your guns at once with the Gun Stacker system!
• New Enemies in glorious 2D! Serious Sam Double D brings the crazy with new creatures like the flying Chimputee and the Etanoh Salvo Spider!
• Porta Pad technology: Secret technology to be revealed at PAX East this weekend!

Remember if you're at PAX East this weekend, come by the Devolver Digital booth (I-16 in the "Indie Alley") to play a demo of Serious Sam Double D!

Screenshots and art below (they may load a little slow, but they're worth it! Click for full resolution.)

Mommy's Best Games, Inc. is a boutique game developer founded in 2007. We strive to deliver games that push the edges of the medium through gameplay, art, and pie. Our first game, Weapon of Choice, is an award-winning, side-scrolling, action game now available Xbox LIVE Indie Games. And our newest, award-winning games Shoot 1UP and Explosionade are also available on XBLIG. Follow MBG on Twitter to find out more!