Sam & Max is something that I love and I wish it was?? more popular. However, I know that if it actually did become more popular, I’d probably become fatigued quite quickly and stop loving it as much. Sometimes we don’t know what’s good for us.

However, it has been 14 years since the last Sam & Max adventure. Unless you count 2021’s Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual, which I don’t because my eyes have not yet been tainted by VR. That last time was Telltale’s Sam & Max: Season 3: The Devil’s Playhouse, which i??s the last game in Skunkape Games�r?emastering effort.

Back when it launched, I really dug into Season 3. I was enraptured, but bec??ause of its episodic nature, I got halfway through the third episode before losing momentum and never finishing the rest. So, I was happy to get a reason to try again, and it was worth it since this was easily the best season of Telltale’s series.

Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse (PC [Reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Switch)
Developer: Skunkape Games, Telltale
Publisher: Skunkape Games
Released: August 14, 2024
MSRP: $19.99

If you’re not familiar with Sam & Max, it’s really di??fficult to describe. They’re Freelance Police, which puts them in a position to abuse their dubious power, and they’re chaotic enough to do it. The pair are essentially a twisted vaudeville act, with Sam acting as the straight man and Max being violently unrestrained. The absurd and loose premise means that continuity and worldbuilding aren’t very important, and they can be dropped into essentially any sort of story.

The Devil’s Playhouse is a pretty strong example of this, as the five episodes meander across different tones and genres. The first, titled “The Penal Zone,�h?as shades of B-movie sci-fi. The second is a period adventure. The third kicks off as film noir before abruptly transitioning into something harder to describe. There’s an overarching plot that is a lot more Lovecraftian, but it all threatens to turn on a dime at any moment.

Strangely, the Telltale series, including The Devil’s Playhouse, are among the more subdued takes on the series. Other titles are a little more sugar-energized, including 1993’s Sam & Max: Hit the Road, which w?as the blueprint for Telltale’s point-and-click adventure approach. The Telltale game??s have much more dialogue, which slows down the manic pace. This isn’t a big issue. I just think comparison within one franchise is neat. If that makes me boring, well, I thought that was already established.

Despite its more casual gait, the story doesn’t lack in weirdness. It involves Earth being invaded by a talking sp??ace gorilla while Max, the hyperkinetic rabbity thing, gains psychic powers from touching a View-Master. The next five episodes center around an artifact called “The Devil’s Toybox�and the Toys of Power it contains. The plot then meanders through all kinds of cosmic horror.

What makes The Devil’s Playhouse a bit more appealing than the previous seasons �especially now that they’ve been remastered �is the fact that it sticks better to a??n overarching plot. All of the episo?des end in some sort of effective cliffhanger. Despite this, each one feels unique and adds its own twist.

The second episode, The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, has you take the role of the pair’s early-20th-century grandparents, Sameth and Maximus. It’s interesting, as you follow the story in a non-lin??ear fashion by switching between film reels and bringing knowledge in later reels back to earlier ones to solve puzzles.

The third episode, They Stole Ma?x’s Brain, opens with Sam going full film noir ?and savagely interrogating people on the streets. The film noir motif hits the brakes too early, which is unfortunate because it’s a memorable detour. Characters reacting to his depressing monologues is one of the funniest moments in the game. But there I go, wishing for too much of a good thing again.

The Devil’s Playhouse subscribes to the early formula for Telltale’s adventures, which was informed by the older Lucasartsâ€?point-and-click games. The problem with Telltale’s early adventures was that they were just okay from a gameplay perspective. As much as I love the Sam & Max games and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, it’s mostly for their sights and sounds and not the puzzle??s.

While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why they’re underwhelming, I think it’s mainly from how they’re communicated. In older adventure titles, the scenes would often be set in a wa?y that draws focus to your goals. There would be something obvious in the background, a character th??at is repeating their actions, or just a number of clearly interactive objects. Sometimes, you’d need to explore to get context, but usually, you knew where your focus should be.

Telltale’s Sam & Max games are more about exploring?? to get context. Often, you need to talk to everyone possible and look at everything in the environment to figure out what strange thing is central to your next problem. This might be partially a problem with the episodic format since backdrops get repeatedly reused and can’t be set up in such a particular way.

The puzzle design isn’t terrible by any means. They just aren’t as satisfying as ?they should be. That makes the requisite exploration a little more boring.

The narrative of The Devil’s Playhouse is, overall, the best of the three Telltale seasons, but its final episode is rather disappointing. While it has a great setup, it feels like the story required a longer runtime to tell properly. It introduces new story threads quickly, then brushes them aside even faster. Characters from previous seasons show up without reintroduction. Meanwhile, the ending was so poorly cut together that I had to watc??h it twice to figure out what had happened.

Speaking of which, the final twist is then brought up and almost accidentally resolved. It seems that point-and-click adventure games have a tendency to trip up during the climax, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. However, all the ingredients to a satisfying conclu?sion were there, they just didn’t get enough time to bake. I hate to repeat myself, but it’s disappointing.

The result is a series of episodes that I enjoyed but won’t be in a hurry to return to, though I’m certain I will eventually. I love Sam & Max, and even if The Devil’s Playhouse isn’t them at the??ir peak, it is enjoyable enough to witness as a fan. I’m at least happy that I finished the season this time.

That’s sort of how it was when The Devil’s Playhouse was released. Telltale made a lot of solid but unspectacular point-and-click games, and Sam & Max lived in that era. It was followed by the solid but unspectacular Back to the Future: The Game and the somewhat disastrous Jurassic Park: The Game before we wound up on their seminal The Walking Dead. At? that point, their formula changed completely as the??y sped toward death by mismanagement.

But even if unspectacular, it’s easy to love the games from Telltale’s early days, and it’s obvious that the developers at Skunkape do. While you can still tell that the game was first released in 2010, the glow-up is substantial and effective in making it feel more at home amongst its modern peers. I’m still hoping that, now that the Sam & Max games have been remastered (and assuming their next move isn’t to make a brand new entry), they look at remastering my beloved Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. A girl can dream.

The remaster of The Devil’s Playhouse is a loving polishing that lives up to the standards of the previous Skunkape efforts. Better yet, Season 3 is easily the best one. If you’re looking to get into the series, it’s probably still better to jump in at Season 1. If you’ve been along for the ride this long, then you won’t be disappointed. The Telltale Sam & Max series may not be the most mindblowing point-and-clicks you’ll ever witness, but after playing through the first two seasons, you owe it to yourself to ?cap it off. Can’t think of a reason not to.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Last we heard from Skunkape Games, their remaster of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse was slated for a Spring release. We’re out of Spring now, but I guess we can let it slide. Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse now has a release date of August 14, 2024 on PC and console.

Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse was the third season of Telltale’s Sam & Max revival. It was also the last. It’s also the last one that Skunkape Games needs to remaster! Unless they’re going to touch up Sam & Max: Hit the Road. It was also potentially the best one. When it first released in 2010, I wo??und up only playing through half of it. I really enjoyed what I played. ?I thought it was terrific. Then I just stopped for some reason.

But that’s not going to happen this time. I’ve read all the Sam & Max comics and watched the show. I am determined to play through The Devil’s Playhouse this time to consummate my love for the series.

If you’re not familiar, the Sam & Max games are point-and-click adventure games. The duo was created by Steve Purcell and adapted into 1993’s Sam & Max: Hit the Road by Lucasarts. It’s one of the developer's classic SCUMM adventure games and one of the best. The Telltale games are essentially a revival of that and were their first successful episodic series. They tried the episodic approach with their adaptations of Bone, but that only made it to two episodes.

Sam & Max feature the “freelance police,�whose role in society is uncertain. They solve weird crime. Sam is a giant bipedal dog, while Max is a hyperkinetic rabbity thing. If I were to describe their adventures, I’d probably use the word “hijinks.�/p>

The Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse remaste??r releases on August 14 for PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

The post Sam & Ma?x: The Devil’s Playhouse remaster misses Spring and arrives in August appeared first on Destructoid.

We already knew a remaster of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse was on its way from Skunkape Games, but now we have a release window. It will arrive Spring 2024.

Technically, this is a delay, but the announcement of a 2023 timeframe never happened. It was just a shared hallucination.

Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse was the last of Telltale’s revival of the Sam & Max license and also sort of the last traditional point-and-click adventure that they want you to remember before the formula changed with The Walking Dead. Jurassic Park: The Game never happened. It was just a folie à deux.

Skunkape has been going to work saving the three seasons of Sam & Max from being buried alongside Telltale. While those games were still technically available, they were from an uncomfortable period of PC gaming and didn’t support the beefy resolutions we have today. Skunkape has taken a brush to the first two seasons and touched them up beautifully with better lighting and lip-syncing. Now it’s Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse’s turn.

Indulge me

I played Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse back in 2010 when they were being released one episode at a time. I got about halfway through episode three when I lost interest and never went back. I’d sa??y that’s part of why the episodic format is so rare these days, but I’m pretty sure Telltale asked for players to pay upfront for all the episodes at that point, so they didn’t lose sales to poor attention spans.

What I did play sticks with me to this day because the humor felt a lot darker than the first two seasons. While I don’t think series creator Steve Purcell contributed to the last season, they did bring in Mike Stemmle, who helped design 1993’s Sam & Max Hit the Road.

After Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, I’m hoping that Skunkape remasters another Telltale title, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. Telltale recently lost the rights to it, which I hope means that they were picked up by Skunkape. The Brothers Chapman themselves are making games in the Homestar Runner universe, with Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate having released this past August (it’s fantastic). The time is right. Or maybe I should say, “Gimme.�/p>

The remaster of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse is set to ??release Spring 2024 for PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox? Series X|S.

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We're off again, lil' buddy

Skunkape Games has announced that it has begun development of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered, following on from its previously released remasters of Telltale Games classics Sam & Max Save the World Remastered and Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space Remastered. This latest retread will launch on u?nannounced platforms later in 2023.

First released on PC and PS3 way back in 2010, The Devil's Playhouse was the third of Telltale Games' Sam & Max adventures, and sees the Freelance Police investigate a series of strange phenomena linked to the powerful psychic machinations of the mysterious "Toys of Power". The original release of The Devil's Playhouse sported a fresh new gam?e engine, and allowed the player to take direct control of both Sam and Max independently �all?owing for a shakeup of the title's puzzle elements and adding an extra emphasis on synergy and teamwork between the two characters.

//www??.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPuWAQvRyw&ab_channel=Skunkape

While Skunkape Games has not offered any official information on the new title, we can likely expect The Devil's Playhouse Remastered to feature updated character models and environmental textures, tauter controls, and slicker U.I. integration. If we're lucky, we might also see the new release include additional artwork, voicework, and music, as was the case for both Save the World Remastered and Beyond Time and Space Remastered. We'll be sure to give you a heads-up when more information �inc?luding platforms and a release date �is forthcoming.

Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered is currently in development at Skunkape Games.

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