Co-op & crossplay in Serious Sam: Shatterverse

1–5 player online co-op with crossplay across PC, PS5 and Xbox. Solo mode is supported but the design clearly assumes a squad. Here's the practical breakdown.

Squad size: 1 to 5

The Steam page lists co-op for 1 to 5 players, online. That includes solo (1) and a full five-stack at the high end. The middle of the range (2–4 players) is where the game is tuned — the multi-Sam gimmick and the arena balance are designed around a four-person squad. A full five-player run works but is chaotic in the way you'd expect from a Serious Sam arena.

There's no local split-screen. The Steam page lists Online Co-op and Cross-Platform Multiplayer as the co-op modes. Couch co-op is not in.

Crossplay: PC, PS5, Xbox

Cross-Platform Multiplayer is listed on the Steam page, which in Steam's category system means PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S players can all party up together. There's no Switch version, so it's a three-platform pool. Devolver hasn't published the crossplay implementation details (whether it's full invite-link or platform-account-bound), but the feature is there on day one — which is more than a lot of cross-platform shooters manage.

Cross-progression is not separately listed. The Steam page calls out Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud, so PC players get cross-device save sync via Steam, but cross-platform save carryover between PC and console is not confirmed in the launch material.

What the multi-Sam gimmick actually changes

The hook of Shatterverse is that Mental has cracked the multiverse, so each run is populated by different versions of Sam Stone from different realities. The "multi-Sam" framing isn't just a story device — each alternate Sam has a different look, voice and ability set, and the game's balance and arena design assumes you'll be running with a mix of them. Devolver has been quiet on the specific ability trees per Sam, but the steam page describes it as "stack wild boons" and "bend the rules with run modifiers," so the variety is in the run-to-run unlocks layered on top of the multi-Sam base kits.

Practically, this means: the same arena plays differently depending on who's in the squad. A four-Sam run with one tank-style Sam, one sniper Sam, one support Sam, and one glass-cannon Sam is going to feel very different from a four-stack of all the same Sam archetype. Roguelite variety, but the variety axis is the squad composition, not just the meta unlocks.

Online infrastructure expectations

Behaviour Interactive is the studio — they're the team behind Dead by Daylight, which has been running a live-service co-op game for seven years. Their matchmaking and online backend are battle-tested. Devolver as publisher has shipped a lot of co-op games (Anger Foot, Wizard of Legend 2) without major online infrastructure issues. Neither of these is a guarantee — every online game has day-one wobbles — but the risk profile is much lower than a first-time co-op studio.

Specifics not yet published: dedicated server support, ping limits, region locking, party-code vs platform-account linking, mod support. Most of this will show up in the first week of launch reviews.