Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse is here!

Somewhere, in the infinite blackness beyond the limits of human comprehension, an ancient, terrible power lies waiting. Since the dawn of time, villains throughout the galaxy have searched for a way to tap into that power, bending all of creation to their own twisted ends. But you needn’t freak out, my friends. There’s nothing to fear... Unless, of course, this power should somehow fall into the wrong hands.

Welcome, my friends, to Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered.

After three years of hard work, we’re beyond excited to bring you the most ambitious of Telltale’s Sam & Max seasons, gloriously remastered for today’s video game playing devices. Read on for a long list of what we’ve done in the remaster—or bookmark this post for later if you want to go in blind! But first…

Launch Discount Details

The Devil’s Playhouse has a 10% launch discount on Steam through August 27. It’s a good way to save a few bucks!

But hey, if you own our other Sam & Max remasters, here’s an even better way: buy the Complete Trilogy bundle.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/42652

You’ll get 25% off PLUS the 10% launch discount, and the games you already own will be subtracted from the purchase price. That comes out to $13.49 (or equivalent in your local currency) for The Devil's Playhouse if you already own Save the World and Beyond Time and Space.

Free DLC: The Original 2010 Version

Want to compare and contrast between the original and the remaster? We have you covered! The 2010 episodes are included with the remaster as free DLC.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3162640/Sam__Max_The_Devils_Playhouse_2010_Original_Version/

Once you add the DLC, when you start the game from your Steam library, you’ll see this launcher:

We’re still pulling together the bonus features, but when those are ready you’ll be able to access them through the launcher too. We'll update this post when the archival special features start to drop.

And now take your seats, turn off your cell phones and pagers, and prepare yourselves for an epic list of everything* that’s changed in Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered.

*Maybe not everything. We have the memory of a dried trout. If you’re curious about something you notice in the remaster that’s not mentioned on this list, please ask us about it!

The Big Stuff

• We re-lit the game from the ground up. Like our first two Sam & Max remasters, The Devil's Playhouse is lit head to toe in beautiful cinematic lighting, dynamic shadows, and color grading, with an eye toward keeping its original "old stinky film" look while letting the world shine through in a way meant to evoke Steve Purcell's original comics. We touched all the lighting in the game, from the biggest environments to the tiniest cutscenes. We also added some new atmospheric effects to this season, most notably some soft volumetric sun shafts that appear in the occasional shot.

• Every environment and character are higher resolution, allowing for added detail and smoother animation. This season has always featured the beautiful work of concept artist Ryan Jones, and we were able to work from his original drawings to add extra detail to the characters and environments that couldn’t be done with the original 2010 polygon counts. We pushed the environments as far as we could toward feeling like the comics come to life. We also re-exported and cleaned up all the game's original animation files to remove the compression and shaky jank that plagued them, and redid the lip sync