Submarine

Lore & Background

In the world of Serious Sam, the conflict with the forces of General B.R. Umbra has long since spilled beyond any single surface. The submarine the player commandeers is a military-grade craft repurposed for the war effort, its hull scarred by previous engagements. It sits in a flooded staging bay, waiting for a pilot bold enough to take it into the deep.

Croteam designed the submarine sequence as a deliberate tonal shift. After hours of sprinting through deserts, temples, and open fields with a shotgun or a rocket launcher, the player is suddenly enclosed, slow, and surrounded by water. The torpedo fire is deliberate rather than spray-and-pray, and the enemy design shifts to creatures and machines built for the pressure. The submarine becomes a character in its own right: a cramped, clanking, groaning machine that feels alive under the player's hands.

The vehicle never reappears as a persistent tool in the player's arsenal. It is a single-use set piece, a chapter in the campaign rather than a line item on a loadout screen. That limitation is part of its charm; it exists to be experienced once, fully, with the weight of the ocean pressing in on every side.

In Their Own Story

The hatch seals with a hydraulic shudder. Sam grips the wheel, and the periscope flickers to life, painting the black water ahead in a thin band of green. Somewhere below, something the size of a freight train is turning over in the silt, and the hull shudders with the distant thud of its heartbeat.

He eases the throttle forward. The submarine groans, listing two degrees to port, and the torpedoes in their racks slide forward a centimetre with a metallic clink. Through the porthole, a cluster of spider-like machines detaches from the tunnel wall and fans out, their legs clicking against the rock.

Sam lines up the first torpedo. The tube hisses, the round tumbles out in a slow spiral of bubbles, and the water ahead erupts in a white shockwave that rolls the whole craft sideways. He laughs. There are more. There are always more.

Reader's Guide

Silhouette and firing feel: The submarine is a broad, low-slung hull with a raised conning tower and a single forward torpedo tube. You do not aim with a crosshair the way you would with a rifle; instead, the craft turns slowly on the wheel, and each torpedo is a committed, arcing shot with a visible bubble trail. The firing cadence is deliberate—lock in, fire, wait for the reload tick, reposition. It feels like driving a tank underwater.

Damage profile: Torpedoes deal heavy area damage on detonation, capable of wiping out clustered enemies in a single splash. They are not precision tools; they are crowd-clearing ordnance. Individual small enemies may survive a near-miss, but anything in the blast radius is gone.

Ammo type: Torpedoes, with a limited magazine that reloads over a short delay. You will run dry if you hold position too long, so movement between shots is essential.

First appearance: The submarine is encountered in an underwater section of Serious Sam 2. It is a scripted set piece rather than a pickup that drops mid-level.

Fan verdict: A crowd-pleaser. It is short, loud, and deeply satisfying, and most players remember it as one of the game's standout moments rather than a grind.

Version notes: The submarine sequence is specific to Serious Sam 2 and does not carry over as a persistent vehicle into later titles in the series.

Did You Know?

• The submarine is a one-time set piece in Serious Sam 2; it does not persist as a selectable vehicle in the player's loadout after the sequence ends.
• The torpedo fire has a visible bubble trail and a short arcing trajectory, making it more of a lobbed projectile than a straight-line ray.
• The submarine section is designed as a tonal contrast to the open-field and temple levels that bookend it, shifting the player from fast sprint-and-shoot to slow, deliberate navigation.
• Croteam built the submarine sequence to showcase their underwater rendering and physics, making it a technical highlight as much as a gameplay one.