Mental to stop him. He then travels to the abandoned city of Memphis, where he finds a fifth relic, the icon of Amon-Ra, in the Temple of Ptah. NETRISCA then instructs him to go to Thebes, which results in a long and difficult trek through the desert during which Sam is forced to dump most of his ammo in order to lighten his load. At Thebes, Sam works his way through the city until he reaches a sanctuary where he manages to activate a hidden Sirian communicator concealed in an obelisk in the heart of Luxor, which summons a Sirian starship to Earth from deep space. Sam rushes to the Great Pyramids of Giza in order to rendezvous with the starship, only to be cornered by Mental's top general and most powerful warrior, Ugh Zan III. After defeating the giant by using the Sirian technology built into the pyramids to weaken him, Sam then teleports himself onto the starship, dubbed the "SSS Centerprice". He finds a payphone and leaves a message for Mental telling him that he has a "special delivery package" for him and sets a course to Sirius, the Sirian homeworld. The story ends with Sam breaking the fourth wall by telling the player that its "bedtime" as the game indicates that his story will continue. Development Croteam began developing the game in 1996 formally titled In the Flesh. It was coined to be a first-person shooter with a dark and horror setting. They've opted to develop their own engine for the game due to licensing costs for other engines at the time being too high. Over time, the tone of the game changed from its dark horror to a bright and colorful setting, and began developing Serious Sam. Croteam did not have a way to playtest the game on as many systems as possible to fully optimize the game, so they opted to release public demos in 2000 on Gamespy to have players try out builds to better improve the game. Sam's voice actor John J. Dick was one of the players to try out the public demo, and after writing to Croteam expressing his interest to help voice the character for the English release of the game, he was officially hired to voice the titular character since then. Croteam created their own engine for use in both The First Encounter and The Second Encounter. Named the