Sam & Max The Devil’s Playhouse Review

If you are of a certain *ahem* age, then you will probably remember Sam & Max, well it turns out the pair are returning for one more point-and-click crime-stopping adventure in the most recent remaster of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse. However, the question we need to answer today is if the game is the callback we all didn’t know we wanted or if it should have stayed in the past. 

Now, the first thing to note is that this is a remaster of a game from 2010, rather than a brand-new title. The Devil’s Playhouse was originally developed by the previously defunct Telltale Games. This new, upgraded version comes to us from developer Skunkape Games. As it stands, the plot is still relatively the same and it takes the same episodic format as the original. 

If you’ve never heard of Sam and Max, let me break it down as simply as I can: Sam is a straight-shooting dog who works as a detective. Max, meanwhile, is his psychopathic rabbit best friend who also happens to be the president. The pair spend their days as Freelance Police, solving mysteries and (sometimes) arresting bad guys. Their latest adventure takes a turn to the galactic and throws them up against a space gorilla who is on a mission to take over the world. Look, the cartoons were just as weird, okay? Just be glad we don’t have a Freakazoid game. 

The plot does what it needs to, and the narration given by the strange floating man between sections is entertaining enough. However, The Devil’s Playhouse’s real strength comes from the host of zany and peculiar characters you’ll meet. Sam and Max play the buddy cop role as well as they ever did, and each other character finds their comedic mark with ease. I never really felt lost with what was happening, and I always knew where I needed to go and when. Honestly, I even laughed at a few of the jokes, although that was because they made me feel like I was a kid in the ‘90s again. To a newer audience, some of the lines might appear a bit corny and dated. 

Gameplay appears as your run-of-the-mill point-and-click detective game, something Telltale was very good at. You will spend your time as Max, exploring locations, looking for items, and talking to people to figure out where you need to go and who you need to speak to. One thing to note is that, unlike Telltale's The Walking Dead: The Final Season, there aren’t really any QuickTime combat events that you need to worry about. The Devil’s Playhouse is more about puzzles than anything else. Thankfully, the puzzles are fun to figure out, although sometimes it can be quite hard to decipher what you need to do, leading gameplay to devolve into hitting everything with the items in your inventory to see what fits. 

You don’t just control Sam as the other major gameplay point comes when you control Max. Your psychotic little bunny friend has got his mitts on some magical toys that grant him psychic powers. Throughout The Devil’s Playhouse, Max learns how to transform into items found in the world, teleport to a phone, and even read minds. These are the powers that you will use to solve most puzzles. For instance, reading a prisoner's mind to learn his phone number, and then teleporting to that phone to escape. The game also uses the mind-reading feature to offer a bit of humour by letting you find out what everyone is thinking or seeing a glance into the future. 

While the puzzles and psychic powers are fun, controlling Sam is less entertaining. The Devil’s Playhouse suffers from the same issue that plagues most point-and-click games: you will spend most of your time walking back and forth, clicking everything. It doesn’t help that Sam is quite slow even when sprinting and the constant load times make going back and forth a pain in the rabbit. 

Visually, The Devil’s Playhouse is quite the upgrade, with some crisp updated visuals and awesome sound design. The character models are true to form, although they can get a bit wacky on occasion. I did notice that it could be quite hard to tell which door lets you out of some areas, which can be a bit of a pain, but you’ll soon get over that. The audio is exactly what I expected, with some great music and hearing both Sam and Max sent me on a nostalgia trip like you wouldn’t believe. 

Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse isn’t anything new, and it follows a gameplay style that really isn’t for everyone. However, if you are a fan of the ‘90s comedy, insane rabbits and never played the original, then this is worth checking out. If you want something a bit more fast-paced then this likely isn’t the game for you.