Croteam is a video game developer established in Zagreb, Croatia in 1993, initially as a "garage games" company. They only had six employees and four contractors for the development of Serious Sam in 2001.
Company history[]
Their first game was Football Glory, a football game which was released by Black Legend for Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200 platforms in (1994) and then for PC and PC CD-ROM in (1995). The game scored high marks in Amiga magazines in UK and Germany with several "game of the month" awards. The game was number one the UK Gallup charts in December 2005.
In (1995) Croteam finished Five-A-Side soccer, an indoor soccer version of Football Glory for the Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200, but Amiga market was almost dead by that time, so no publisher was signed.
One year later, Save The Earth, a game for a television contest, was also developed.
A long hiatus followed, broken by the first title of the Serious Sam series (Serious Sam: The First Encounter) in 2001, followed by Serious Sam: The Second Encounter in 2002. Both Serious Sam games used Croteam's in-house Serious Engine. In 2002 Serious Sam for the Xbox was released, which consisted of both games with the additional number of cinematics, an updated scores system, combos, multikills, auto-aiming and other console specific features. A second sequel, Serious Sam II for both PC and Xbox was released on October 11, 2005 and features the newly developed Serious Engine 2.
In addition to its commercial success, Serious Sam has garnered critical acclaim from the games media, winning ign.com's "Game of the Year" (PC) award for 2001, amongst others. Serious Sam currently holds an average score of 83% at Game Rankings, with 76% for Serious Sam II.
In development[]
As of May 2007[update], Croteam is working on Serious Sam 3 for PC and Xbox 360 platforms. Croteam is concurrently developing the Serious Engine 3 which will be used to power the new game as well as another as yet unnamed game which will be based around modern day warfare. Serious Sam 3 is currently planned to be finished in 2010.[1]
Notable games developed by Croteam[]
- Five-A-side soccer
- Football Glory
- Serious Sam
- Serious Sam II