Let’s not beat around the bush: Will Rock is basically Serious Sam.

That’s the first comparison anyone makes. And they’re not wrong. It plays almost exactly like Croteam’s arena shooter—fast, chaotic, and ridiculous. But calling it a copy misses something important. Because Will Rock isn’t just a clone. It’s a four-month miracle, a budget game from a brand-new studio, and a strange, beautiful mess stuffed with quirks that make it unforgettable. That is, if you were lucky enough to stumble into it.

Saber Interactive was brand new in 2003. Will Rock was their very first game. They built it in just over four months. Four months to create an entire FPS from scratch on a brand-new engine. An engine that didn’t even have a name yet—it would later become Saber3D. At the time, Will Rock was basically a tech demo wearing an Ancient Greece skin.

The game came out in June 2003 under Ubisoft. But the marketing wasn’t exactly explosive. The most famous thing about it wasn’t a trailer. It was the soundtrack. Specifically: Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock.” It’s definitely in the trailer. It’s apparently in the main menu. YouTube uploads show it.

And yet… after replaying the game, I never heard it once. That’s not a song you just miss. So maybe it’s a ghost track. Maybe it’s a Mandela Effect. Either way, it’s the most famous song that may or may not actually be in the game.

Distribution was weird, too. Ubisoft sold it in stores. But it also came bundled with Gigabyte PC-CDROM drives. A lot of players didn’t buy it—they just found it on their new hardware. That’s how many people first played Will Rock: by accident. Which might explain why it feels like a half-remembered fever dream now.

The story is early-2000s action nonsense. Willford Rockwell, archaeologist, gets possessed by Prometheus. Prometheus gives him powers. He goes to war with Zeus to save his girlfriend. That’s it. But the Greek mythology setting works. Where Serious Sam had Egypt and aliens, Will Rock has Minotaurs, Harpies, Centaurs, Cyclops, skeleton warriors, and massive Atlas statues that rip themselves free from pedestals and come for you.

And this is where the boom begins.

Minotaurs don’t just die—they split into more Minotaurs when you kill them. Atlas statues don’t just stand there—they crash forward like a granite linebacker. Harpies dive-bomb screaming. Rat-bombs explode. Enemies accidentally damage each other in the chaos. The screen becomes a mess of smoke, blood, and flying marble.

The weapons make it louder. You’ve got the standard pistol, shotgun, machine gun, and minigun. But then it gets weird. The shotgun looks like a lever-action rifle and uses rifle ammo. The Medusa Gun turns enemies to stone so you can smash them into gravel. The Acid Gun inflates enemies until they burst with a wet rubber squeal. The Atomic Gun fires a miniature nuke. And the shovel—the humble melee weapon—is absurdly effective, especially against archers. Every weapon feels tuned for chaos.

Then there are the Titan powers. You collect gold to buy them at altars. Immortality makes sense. Titan Damage makes sense. Titan Motion? It slows down time—and slows you down too. It’s basically useless. A broken power-up in a game already running at maximum speed. But that’s Will Rock. Half the fun is in its glorious mistakes.

The level design swings wildly. Sometimes you’re in wide-open killboxes built for maximum slaughter. Sometimes you’re in cramped switch-hunts that feel like filler. You’ll bounce on trampolines, fire yourself from catapults, sneak through a Trojan horse, pull endless levers. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s busywork. But it’s never quiet.

Reviews at the time were mixed. Metacritic score: 63. GameSpot called it a “mindless knockoff.” IGN called it “hard.” Other critics called it too easy because enemies dropped in three hits and health pickups were everywhere. Even the difficulty became a quirk—easy for some, brutal for others.

For most players, Will Rock disappeared quickly. It was overshadowed by Serious Sam and never got a sequel. But for the people who remember it? It’s the quirks that stand out. The regenerating Minotaurs. The statues that wake up. The useless Titan Motion. The shotgun that’s somehow a rifle. The shovel that’s better than half the guns. The ghost of Twisted Sister haunting the main menu.

For everyone else, Will Rock is just another budget shooter from 2003. But for those who stumbled into it—maybe from a Gigabyte CD-ROM—it’s something stranger. A flawed, loud, chaotic snapshot of early-2000s FPS excess. A game that didn’t just copy Serious Sam. It kept the boom going.