Review: Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse

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 is the last game in Skunkape Games’ remastering effort.

Back when it launched, I really dug into Season 3. I was enraptured, but because 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 difficult 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,” has 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 was the blueprint for Telltale’s point-and-click adventure approach. The Telltale games 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 space 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 an overarching plot. All of the episodes 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-linear fashion by switching between film reels and bringing knowledge in later reels back to earlier ones to solve puzzles.

The third episode, They Stole Max’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 Lucasarts’ 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 puzzles.

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 way that draws focus to your goals. There would be something obvious in the background, a character that 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 watch 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 conclusion 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 their 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 they 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.]}