Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse News

[p]ICYMI, our next game is a remastered version of Poker Night at the Inventory, which features four fan-favorite characters — Max (from Sam & Max), Strong Bad (from Homestar Runner), Tycho (from Penny Arcade), and The Heavy (from Team Fortress 2) — bantering over a game of Texas Hold’em. It'll be out on March 5![/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]To celebrate, we’re expanding the scope of our (more or less) annual arts & crafts contest, which has been Sam & Max themed in the past, to include all four of these guys. (And, if you feel like it, poker!)[/p][p][/p][h3]What’s in it for me?[/h3][p]The joy of creating art for art’s sake. Just kidding. We’ll send each winner a Poker Night at the Inventory game key for your platform of choice. How many winners, exactly? We won’t know until we see the entries![/p][p][/p][p]But that’s not all. For a few of our favorites, we’ll toss in a set of Poker Night themed chips that have been carefully stashed away in a team member’s closet for the past fifteen years. They might be, um, shedding a little. They just need someone to love them.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]And the grand prize? That's where it gets really special. The creator of our #1 favorite entry will get a game key plus a prize bundle that includes one incredible item from each of the four franchises:[/p][p]
A pair of Max slippers from Uncute (currently sold out!)[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]A talking Strong Bad plush (also sold out!)[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]A portrait of Tycho painted by Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik (truly one of a kind!)[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]A Team Fortress 2 poster signed by Valve employees (the envy of all your friends!)[/p][p][/p][h3]The Fine Print[/h3]

• [p]Your entry must include at least one of the four characters.[/p]
• [p]Your entry doesn’t have to relate to poker… but we might like it more if it does. 👀[/p]
• [p]Any creative endeavor is welcome, be it fan art, cosplay, sculpture, video, music, needle arts, food, etc. We love entries that surprise us.[/p]
• [p]Too many ideas? Can’t decide which is best? No problem! Enter as many times as you want (but you can only win once).[/p]
• [p]AI-generated assets and images will not be considered. We want to see stuff made entirely by you![/p]
• [p]US and international entries are allowed. Be prepared to give us your mailing address if you win one of the physical prizes. We'll cover shipping but can't be responsible for any import taxes or tariffs charged after the package leaves our care.[/p]
• [p]Email your entry to [email protected] by 11:59pm Pacific time on Friday, February 27. Rather than sending big attachments, please host them somewhere like Google Drive and send a link. Your email should also include anything you want us to know about the entry, and your name / social media handles (for us to post on Bluesky/Twitter if you win).[/p]

[p][/p][p]Once the contest closes, the extended Skunkape family will argue about our favorite entries for a few days and reveal the winners on or around March 4.[/p][p][/p][p]So break out those crayons, scissors, and welding torches, and make something that will wow us![/p]

[p]On September 14, 2005, Telltale Games held an evening event in a downtown San Francisco high-rise. The attendees were mainly potential investors, with a few journalists invited to hear a Big Announcement. Telltale’s first episodic adventure game, Bone: Out from Boneville, was hours away from release, and they were secretly working on CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, but the surprise announcement was for something else… and Steve Purcell was sitting in the audience, rocking his trademark fedora.[/p][p][/p][p]Just after midnight, Adventure Gamers broke the news that Telltale and Steve had signed a deal to make episodic Sam & Max games—and an entire fandom wept openly.[/p][p][/p][h2]An Episodic Sociopathic Lagomorph[/h2][p]The Sam & Max announcement made its way to the decision-makers at GameTap, a new video game streaming service owned by Turner Entertainment. The media company had found success airing old shows and films on channels like Turner Classic Movies and the Cartoon Network, and now they were trying to do the same thing with old video games, but GameTap was off to a bumpy start. They needed original content to attract subscribers. A game that came out episodically, like a TV show, would be a perfect fit.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]Fast forward to the spring of 2006: GameTap announced at E3 that Telltale’s Sam & Max Season One would debut on their service that fall. GameTap had a huge E3 booth that year, with the Sam & Max trailer playing on a loop on the big screen. Telltale’s CEO Dan Connors even did a live interview with Space Ghost! Unfortunately the video footage has been lost to time, but we had a signed Space Ghost poster hanging in the office for years, so we’re 99.9% sure this really happened.[/p][p] [/p][h2]Speaking of Posters...[/h2][p]GameTap also handed out Sam & Max posters at the booth, featuring new art by Steve Purcell. We later used the art on postcards that we brought to trade shows like Comic-Con and E for All (story for another time), but the poster was only ever available at this show, making it uber-rare.[/p][p][/p][p]And… we want YOU to win one! [/p][p][/p][p]Recently, a former GameTap employee reached out to us saying he’d found one of these rare posters in his closet and couldn’t bear to throw it away. So we said, “Send it to us, we’ll have a contest!” And he did, and we are.[/p][p][/p][h2]ENTER THE CONTEST HERE![/h2][p][/p][p]The contest has five trivia questions. Each correct answer gives you a chance to win. Entries are open through 11:59pm PDT on Sunday, September 21, and we’ll announce the winner on Monday the 22nd on our Bluesky and Twitter.[/p][p] [/p][p][/p][p](If you like behind-the-scenes stuff, Steve described his process for creating this artwork on Facebook.)[/p][p][/p][h2]But Wait, There's More![/h2][p]In honor of how old and decrepit we are this momentous anniversary, all three Sam & Max remasters and soundtracks are on sale this week. If you’ve been waiting to give us your money, the time to act is now. Pick 'em up piecemeal, or splurge on the bundles for an even bigger discount![/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][p][/p]

Over on The Sam & Max Funhouse page, Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell shared a little bit of behind-the-scenes process on his new cover illustration for the Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse soundtrack. We thought you might like it so we've reproduced the post and images here!

In Lisbon last fall I snapped a worn poster pasted to a wall cause the blue on pink spoke to me. I noodled a sketch to that effect in Procreate. Tried green for the background instead of pink. Drew the line art in croquill and ink knowing I planned to digitally color instead of paint. The little box of text in the corner was always meant to look hand lettered.

With a logo and text assist by Jake Rodkin and some texturing applied, here’s what we wound up with…



https://store.steampowered.com/app/3652710/Sam__Max_The_Devils_Playhouse_Soundtrack/

We hope you've been enjoying the soundtrack! Just a reminder, the 10% off launch deal ends tomorrow. If you're looking for more ways to listen, it's also made its way to Bandcamp, and should start appearing on Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music and more in the coming weeks.

Thanks everyone who has been listening to The Devil's Playhouse Soundtrack these last couple days!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3652710/Sam__Max_The_Devils_Playhouse_Soundtrack/

If you haven't listened to the soundtrack yet, you really should! And now's the best time, since we just put out a little update:

• Added FLAC version. Now you can listen in pure, lossless quality. The audophile's delight.
  
• Added a new track - "Straight & Pharaoh" - to Disc 4. Enjoy a suite of all the music that plays throughout the streets in the alternate dimension revealed in the back half of They Stole Max's Brain.
  
• Updated album cover art to the final version.
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies between actual track title and filenames.
  

Enjoy!

Maybe…

…you’ve played one or two of the Sam & Max remasters, but haven’t completed the trilogy?

…you enjoyed Telltale’s Sam & Max games back in the day, but haven’t tried the spiffy new remasters?

…you’ve never been on a case with the Freelance Police, but you’re intrigued?

Well, we have a sale for you! And you! And you!

Welcome to the Sam & Max Trilogy Sale—a weeklong celebration of the episodic adventures that put Telltale Games (of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us fame) on the map in the early 2000s, and have recently been revived by Skunkape Games, a small crew of the original developers. (Hey, that's us!)

When Telltale shut down in 2018, we acquired the rights and spruced up all three episodic Sam & Max seasons for modern platforms. And now we want you to play them!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Through Thursday, April 24, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, you can save 50% on Sam & Max Save the World (aka Season One) and Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space (aka Season Two). Our newest remaster, Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse (aka Season Three) is 25% off. Each game comes with the original Telltale episodes as free DLC, for those who prefer the old-school experience. And if you pick up the Complete Trilogy bundle, you'll save even more!

We’ve also marked down Jared Emerson-Johnson’s amazing Sam & Max soundtracks, including the long-awaited The Devil’s Playhouse soundtrack, newly available for the very first time.

Want to hear a bit about the remastering process right from the horses’ developers’ mouths? We’ve dug three streams out of the archives so you can do just that. Tune in on the sale page.

And what if you’re the Sam & Max fan who already has it all? Hey, tell your friends! These deals will be on Steam for one week only.