Serious Sam: The Random Encounter is a spin-off of the Serious Sam series, reimagined in the style of a dungeon-crawler RPG with retro-style graphics.
Gameplay revolves around turn-based random battles against large hordes of enemies, in which you select and aim your weapons or items and let loose until the timer runs down and the next turn starts.
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Serious Sam: The Random Encounter contains examples of:
- Bullet Hell: Enemy will throw both large amounts of projectiles and themselves at the party. Some projectiles can be destroyed and dodged, but the idea is to kill them before they can overwhelm you.
- Cartoon Bomb: The Serious Bomb makes a return as an item, killing everything on-screen and dealing massive damage to bosses when used.
- Chicken Walker: The two variants of the Bio-mechanoids, a smaller blue one and a large red one.
- Critical Existence Failure: Sam and his companions can run around just fine with only one hit point remaining, but if one enemy or projectile so much as brushes against them they keel over dead.
- Gatling Good: The minigun can chainsaw down large groups of enemies pretty effectively.
- Item Get!: When Sam gets an item, he lifts it above his head.
- Lethal Joke Item: The Kamikaze Bait. As the name suggests, it instantly summons 100 Beheaded Kamikaze onto the field. They still run towards you, making it very easy to kill your entire party with it, but use it correctly and they can wipe out the entire enemy horde instead.
- Locked Door: Parodied. Sam sees a locked door. "Damn. I hate puzzles." (The key is on the ground a little ways away.)"I must say that was a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle."
- Nested Mouths: Tentaculus has three sets of mouths.
- No Ending: At the end of the game, you fight Ugh-Zan III in a spaceship on top of the great pyramid. Afterwards, the spaceship explodes as the heroes leap towards the screen. Roll credits.
- One-Man Army: Milked for all it's worth. Gameplay consists of your three Sams running backwards while firing heavy artillery at ludicrously massive hordes of baddies.Disco Dan: Need a hand kicking ass?Serious Sam: No. But feel free to join.
- Random Encounters: It's in the name of the game and there are plenty of them to be had.
- Retraux: The game is made in a pixelated style to emulate the Role-Playing Games of old.
- Smart Bomb: The Serious Bomb. It is also one of the few items that can only be found in chests and not earned through battle.
- Turn-Based Combat: The game's combat system relies on a timer mechanic. Enemies are introduced at the start, you pick your weapons and the angle at which to shoot them, or any items you want to use. Then the fight begins and both you and the enemies start to move and shoot. Every five seconds the fight is paused and you get to issue new commands. Rinse and repeat until the fight is over.
- Underwater Boss Battle: Tentaculus. The game mechanics are exactly the same as anywhere else, except the fact that you're underwater gives you different enemies.
- World of Badass: Triple the Sams. Triple the badass.
- Wrap Around: Almost all enemies will try to ram into one of the heroes to damage them. If they miss, they simply continue running and end up on the left side of the screen to try again.
