By Marty Mulrooney
Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered is a five-episode point-and-click adventure game (collected here as a complete package) starring everyone’s favourite six-foot-tall canine detective in a suit and his hyperkinetic rabbity-thing sidekick. Following on from Skunkape Game’s previous remasters of Sam & Max Save the World in 2020 and Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space in 2021, this third and final season of Sam & Max dusts off the original 2010 release from the Telltale Games archives and brings it bang up to date for modern PCs and consoles in 2024.
While the first two seasons of Telltale’s Sam & Max are still a whole lot of fun to play (especially in their remastered forms), The Devil’s Playhouse was a major step up in terms of storytelling. Released a year after the success of Tales of Monkey Island and only a few years before The Walking Dead shifted the studio’s focus towards decision-driven gameplay, this third and final season took everything that worked in the previous seasons – the inventory-based puzzles, the zany music, the colourful cast of characters, the quick-fire dialogue – and added a narrative through-line that took full advantage of its dynamic duo.
In the first episode (The Penal Zone… the jokes write themselves!), Max finds a mysterious toy that allows him to glimpse into the future. It soon transpires that this is just one of many ‘Toys of Power’ that have been set loose from a mysterious artefact called the ‘Devil’s Toybox’ in the basement of Sam and Max’s office. Each new toy reacts differently with Max’s brain, giving him various psychic abilities. It’s all fun and games until the alien General Skun-ka’pe (or Skunk-ape, if you’re being deliberately obtuse like Sam and Max) arrives in his spaceship to collect the toys for himself and use them for his own nefarious means.
Collecting the various Toys of Power and using their abilities as Max adds an inventive extra layer to the traditional inventory-based puzzles and NPC conversations (which are now handled via a snappy topic wheel). For example, one such ability allows Max to teleport himself (and Sam, if they’re touching) to the location of any phone number they’ve collected – a nifty form of fast travel – while another involves him using a Silly Putty-like substance to transform into any inanimate object that he can find a picture of. There is even a creepy ventriloquist dummy that allows Max to throw his voice into other people and objects.
The toys and abilities that are made available constantly change across the game’s five episodes to keep things feeling fresh, but in truth, each episode has its own unique twist that changes the gameplay experience while continuing to push the main story forward. The second episode is told out of sequence as Sam and Max switch between projector reels that allow them to jump into the bodies of their great-grandfathers, while the third episode sees Sam kicking ass and taking names as he tries to find out who stole Max’s brain. Then the final two episodes switch things up again, parodying zombie movies (with a hefty dose of sci-fi) and giant monster movies (with a hefty dose of corn dogs), respectively.
The Skunkape Games team have done a fantastic job remastering The Devil’s Playhouse to make it more appealing to a modern audience. The character models have been upgraded, the lighting and textures have been improved, content cut during the original development has been lovingly restored, there is new cinematography and music (from ultra-talented composer Jared Emerson-Johnson), and the game’s environments have been overhauled with more detail. Take a closer look at the street corner scene in the first episode; what was pretty much a deserted street in the original is now home to an authentic bumper-to-bumper New York City traffic jam.
Numerous bugs have been ironed out too (I remember the original releases being a bit glitchy at times), although I did come across an unusual one in the third episode where a certain character turned invisible. Thankfully, a member of the Skunkape Games team has already emailed me to confirm that this has been fixed (thanks, Emily!), and aside from a few small framerate hitches (usually when teleporting) the experience was rock solid throughout. I was also lucky enough to begin the game on PC (where traditional point-and-click controls are available alongside gamepad support) before finishing the PlayStation 4 version on my PlayStation 5 (as all episodes are unlocked from the outset). Aside from the occasional clunky character animation (this is a game from 2010, after all) the presentation is stellar, and this could easily pass for a contemporary release.
There is a film grain filter applied to The Devil’s Playhouse that can be switched off, but I think it should be left on, as it perfectly complements the third season’s more cinematic aspirations. I have purposely avoided mentioning specific characters, puzzles and story beats because part of the fun is never quite knowing where the story is going to take you next. Unlike the first two seasons environments are recycled far less, and there is a lot of adventuring to be had here – my playthrough clocked in at over 20 hours, and I could remember a lot of the puzzle solutions from 14 years ago. Some of the puzzles are still a bit obtuse, but the hint system is surprisingly robust, and it’s easy to forgive the game’s shortcomings when it’s just so darn charming and funny.
Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered is a great game made even better. With a launch price of around £15 here in the UK, it offers incredible bang for your buck – they simply don’t make adventure games like this anymore. However, the biggest surprise is just how emotional the final episode ends up being. Sam and Max will never be ‘serious’ characters, but their relationship certainly is. Telltale Games stuck the landing in 2010 with a bold ending that I’m sure many fans still look back on fondly today; what a pleasure it is to revisit this game with a modern lick of paint all these years later. I truly hope this isn’t the last release we’ll see from Skunkape Games. Whether they decide to remaster Tales of Monkey Island next or make a fourth season of Sam and Max… I’ll be first in line, eating a fudgecicle.
9 OUT OF 10
Martin Mulrooney
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