The game received a mixed reception, with praise for its controls, conflicting opinions about its visuals, and criticism for its repetitiveness and lack of appeal to non-fans of the Serious Sam series.

[2][6] In-between, the Headless Kamikaze faces several hazards, including cacti, frogs, rockets, bombs, grenades, gaps, and fences.

[4][8][9] These may be avoided by jumping over them, and some can be destroyed or deflected using the kick ability, which fills the "rage meter" that can ultimately kill the character.

[2][8] Achieving these unlocks gameplay modifiers, including a higher frequency of collectibles and a faster drainage of the rage meter.

[4] "Endless" modes have no exit condition, with the player aiming only for the highest possible score through the bonus objective.

[10][13] Be-Rad decided to create an auto-running game, given the experience they had gathered with Lame Castle and because Johnson thought that such gameplay would better suit mobile phones.

He also ruled out making a first-person shooter, as this genre was already covered by the main entries in the Serious Sam series.

[10] Johnson repurposed some code from Lame Castle, which allowed him the time to add further features and apply polish to Kamikaze Attack!.

[6][14] Be-Rad intended to keep players engaged in their game longer than in others in the genre by putting in objectives and boss fights.

was offered as freeware on Android through the Amazon Appstore on November 29, 2011, becoming the storefront's most downloaded free app of that day.

At this time, this version requested the Android-specific "GET_TASKS" permission that Johnson stated was required to use the mobile advertising component Mobclix.

The use of this permission caused concern with some users, who left one-star reviews (the lowest possible rating) on the game's Amazon Appstore site, claiming it to be spyware.

debuted on January 24, 2012, as part of the "Serious Sam Lightning Pack", a collection of games offered at a reduced price on the website Indie Royale.

[35] Some critics found that the hand-drawn graphics were appealing and fit its overall esthetic, with Gamezebo writer Kevin Alexander stating that they "come to life in a simple but effective manner".

Commenting on the controls, Alexander thought them to be "responsive", while Chris Schilling (Pocket Gamer) opined that they were "immaculate".

[5][9] Further criticism highlighted the repetitiveness of the game, as Schilling and Thorin Klosowski (TouchArcade) each saw a lack of variety between the individual levels, including the endless modes.

was a good fit for the Serious Sam franchise, although they believed it would have limited appeal to players with no background knowledge of the series.