Review of The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered — HOLY PSYCHIC LAGOMORPHS, DANCE THE CANCAN ON THE BREAK OF MADNESS, MAX! — GAMINGTREND

Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse was the Freelance Police’s last adventure for a while, and it definitely feels like a spectacular finale. The 2010 adventure game was one of Telltale’s last traditional adventure games before moving to the more narrative-driven format formalized with The Walking Dead. It was great to relive Telltale’s Sam & Max trilogy through Skunkape’s remasters, and The Devil’s Playhouse follows the same trend of excellence as the other two titles.

Picking up shortly after Beyond Time and Space, The Devil’s Playhouse features an alien gorilla who invades Earth in search of powerful children’s toys. As it happens, these toys give Max psychic powers, such as the ability to see the future, read minds, and twist his voice, just like the mystical ventriloquists of old did. Using these powers, Sam’s nearly bottomless inventory, and their shared depravity, the pair must save New York and the known universe from villains over the course of five episodes.

This third season deviates a bit from the previous two. The locations you explore are much smaller and denser, making the inventory item puzzles much more focused. Dialogue trees are also simplified to a radial menu, making it easier to see when you’ve exhausted a character’s dialogue or when an option triggers an event. When exploring, you can also press a button to switch between Sam and Max, the latter of which can use any psychic toys you have to solve puzzles or just confuse people. The future vision toy actually has a lot of foreshadowing that you might not notice on your first playthrough.

Episode 1, The Punishment Zone, starts off fairly normally, but as the season progresses, Max’s powers become more of a focus. So much so that by Episode 4, Beyond Doll Alley, you’re playing Max much more often than Sam. It’s great that our little buddy is getting the spotlight he deserves now after serving mostly as a clue system for the past two seasons, but I think the mind-reading ability is the solution to a few too many mysteries. Having Max more of a focus fits the story well, but I wouldn’t have minded a bit more inventory fiddling before the finale.

This story is a big part of why The Devil’s Playhouse is my favorite Sam & Max adventure. You wouldn’t think it from a comedy adventure game, but this title takes it a step further. It arguably stretches the pair’s bond further than Bad Day on the Moon, while still keeping the tone mostly lighthearted. Don’t be fooled, the game is still entirely focused on comedy, with situations getting more and more absurd as the season progresses. Each episode is based on a film genre like sci-fi, adventure, horror, and more. Episode 3’s noir focus (at least in the first half) makes for some of the game’s funniest moments, with Sam interrogating a rat, a gorilla, and a European with uncharacteristic grimness. This section also has a great twist on the dialogue system, where you can interrupt characters with threats, accusations, or a private investigator monologue. The themes, combined with the deranged antics of the Freelance Police, make you want to apply everything to everything else and exhaust every dialogue tree.

The Devil’s Playhouse was first released 14 years ago, but this remaster by Skunkape (I still read it as Skun-ka-pe) freshens up the game and makes it look brand new. The art style alone holds up, but the better lighting and textures look fantastic. Even on the Switch version, my sister, who hadn’t even looked at the game since we first played it in 2010, said this was a huge step up from the original and looked fantastic. There are framerate drops, which are to be expected on Nintendo’s aging console these days, but while the other two seasons were perfectly playable, I’d be reluctant to recommend the portable version of Devil’s Playhouse. There are a few moments in cutscenes early in the season where the console has trouble loading the next cut, causing the audio to jump back a few times to stay in sync. Oddly, this doesn’t happen later on, only in the first three episodes. Still, it looks good and plays well if you have no other choice.

Not to mention the PC version, where you can really see how much love Skunkape put into this remaster. Every texture looks great, the shadows are flawless, and the animations are much improved compared to the previous games in the season. It’s also much better than the Switch version, as you can see in the video above, but that’s no surprise. Of course, the frame rate and resolution are appropriate for your hardware, but almost everything newer is stronger than the Switch, so there will be compromises on that platform that you don’t see on PC. The Skunkape team have done their best to beautify this, and to great effect, but they’ve done so without breaking the established art style. Best of all, it looks great in 4K resolution – something I never thought I could say about this series.

Unfortunately, there are one or two blemishes in the visual department. The animations are still incredibly stiff and some characters have been designed with more love than others. Worst of all is baby Amelia Earhart, whose face coloring is incredibly odd compared to the other characters, as her skin around her eyes and mouth is very light. This is already apparent in the original Season 3 release, but the effect, which has been more clearly worked out in this remake, looks… odd. Overall, it’s still a good-looking remake, but there are parts that don’t look as good as the rest of the package.

David is a person who wears his heart on his sleeve. He can find something positive in everything, as he did with Star Fox Zero. You’ll see him playing all kinds of games: AAAs, indies, game jam games, games of all genres, and he writes about them! Here. On this website. When he’s not writing or playing, you’ll find David playing music, gaming, or enjoying a good book.
David’s favorite games include NieR: Automata, Mother 3, and Gravity Rush.

Ron Burke is the Editor-in-Chief of Gaming Trend. Ron currently lives in Fort Worth, Texas and is an old-school gamer who enjoys CRPGs, action/adventure, platformers, and music games. He has recently gotten into tabletop gaming.

Ron is also a fourth black belt and master in Matsumura Seito Shōrin-Ryū, Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do, Universal Tang Soo Do Alliance, and International Tang Soo Do Federation. He also holds ranks in several other styles on his journey to becoming a well-rounded fighter.

Ron has been married to Gaming Trend Editor Laura Burke for 28 years. They have three dogs – Pazuzu (Irish Terrier), Atë and Calliope (both Australian Kelpie/Pitbull mixes) and an axolotl named Dagon!

Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, remastered review – HOLY PSYCHIC LAGOMORPHS, DANCE THE CANCAN ON THE BREAK OF MADNESS, MAX!

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