Sam and Max first hit our screens in 1993 with Sam and Max: Hit The Road which was a graphical adventure game. Fast forward 30 years and we are in 2024 with Sam & Max’s latest adventure which has been remastered from their 2010 adventure called Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse which was developed and published by Skunkape Games.

You become one of the Freelance Detectives with Sam who is a straight-shooting dog and Max who is his best friend who is a hyperactive rabbit who reminds me of Hammy from Over The Hedge. The story begins with Sam and Max aboard the evil space ape General Skun’ka’pe or as Sam and Max call him Skunkape which is a nice nod to the developers.

He has come down to try and find all the “Toys of Power” which bring some supernatural feelings with them. Max has always been hyperactive and then he picked up a View-Master and his whole world changed, getting some cool psychic abilities which Sam uses to his advantage.

You pick up this title thinking it’s a point-and-click game which it is primarily and you can play the entire game with the mouse if you wish, but there is the option when it’s time for some movement you can use WASD or hold down the left mouse button. This movement with the camera almost felt like a second thought for the development team. It was super slow and got to the point you half dreaded when you needed to move.

Being a point-and-click title the developers could have easily gotten away with just making it put the mouse where you want it to go and click to move Sam or Max. Apart from that, click options were nice and simple with how big the prompt boxes were and if you got stuck you had the little on-screen helping blips.

There didn’t seem to be a huge amount of difference between the original and the remaster of this title graphically and you could tell in a couple of the cutscenes. The best way I can describe it is that they have a cartoonish feel but an outdated cartoonish feel. I would have loved to see more detail put into the main characters to bring them to life. The environment looked alright but again, I would have loved to see some lighting and shading put in to bring it all up.

The audio is the bit that surprised me the most, I had never played one of these titles before, and I was not aware of what I was walking into and needless to say I was impressed. The voice acting brings you further into the story. You have the mysterious narrator who tells the story whilst you are playing down to the dialogue coming from the characters.

The developers did a fantastic job sliding more cheeky lines in there. The dialogue is also full of cultural and video game references which I was impressed with. The cutscenes at times did feel like they were dragging along a little and you felt like skipping them to get to the point but like I mentioned before the voice acting was great so you get sucked in.

This is an interesting little story and those who like these genres of games would love it. I would love to see some updates on movement and maybe even some graphical updates to bring the game alive and polish the ends off.

Written by: Hayden Nelson