Croteam
 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer and video games |
| Founded | 1993 |
| Headquarters | Zagreb, Croatia |
| Key people |
Roman Ribaric, CEO Alen Ladavac, CTO Davor Hunski, CCO |
| Products | Serious Sam series |
| Website | http://www.croteam.com/ |
Croteam is a Croatian independent game developer based in Zagreb. It was established in 1993 initially as a "garage games" company. They only had six employees and four contractors for the development of Serious Sam: The First Encounter in 2001.
Company history
Their first game was Football Glory, a football game which was published 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.
In (1995) Croteam finished Five-A-Side soccer, an indoor soccer version of Football Glory for the Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200, but the Amiga market was almost dead by that time, so no publisher could be found.
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 sequel, Serious Sam II for both PC and Xbox was released on 11 October 2005 and features the newly developed Serious Engine 2. Serious Sam 3: BFE followed. Development on that game started in 2007, and it came out for the PC in November 2011, soon followed by Mac and Linux versions. The Xbox 360 version of Serious Sam 3 hit the Xbox Live Arcade in September 2012, and PSN is scheduled to be released sometime in autumn 2013. It runs on Croteam's newest engine, "Serious Engine 3.5".
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.
Games developed by Croteam
- Football Glory (1994)
- Five-A-Side Soccer (1996)
- Serious Sam: The First Encounter (2001)
- Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (2002)
- Serious Sam II (2005)
- Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter (2009)
- Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter (2010)
- Serious Sam 3: BFE (2011)
- Serious Sam 4 (Scheduled for 2014)