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 neednāt freak out, my friends. Thereās 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, weāre beyond excited to bring you the most ambitious of Telltaleās Sam & Max seasons, gloriously remastered for todayās video game playing devices. Read on for a long list of what weāve done in the remasterāor bookmark this post for later if you want to go in blind! But firstā¦
[h2]Launch Discount Details[/h2]
The Devilās Playhouse has a 10% launch discount on Steam through August 27. Itās a good way to save a few bucks!
But hey, if you own our other Sam & Max remasters, hereās an even better way: buy the
Complete Trilogy bundle.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/42652
Youāll 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.
[h2]Free DLC: The Original 2010 Version[/h2]
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, youāll see this launcher:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Weāre still pulling together the bonus features, but when those are ready youāll be able to access them through the launcher too. We'll update this post when the archival special features start to drop.
[h3]And now take your seats, turn off your cell phones and pagers, and prepare yourselves for an epic list of everything* thatās changed in Sam & Max: The Devilās Playhouse Remastered.[/h3]
*Maybe not everything. We have the memory of a dried trout. If youāre curious about something you notice in the remaster thatās not mentioned on this list, please ask us about it![h2]The Big Stuff[/h2]
- 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 couldnāt 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 animations with more modern tools. And there are a ton of new little Easter eggs hidden in the dark corners of the world, so keep an eye out.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
- We added full point-and-click support. When The Devil's Playhouse came out in 2010, Telltale was at a crossroads regrading what type of games they wanted to make and which platforms they were prioritizing. As a result, they ditched the traditional point-and-click adventure game controls in favor of a gamepad-first approach. We decided for the remaster, why not both? So we went back and worked full point-and-click mouse support into the game. You can also still play using a gamepad, arrow keys, the old click-and-drag mouse approach, or a touchscreen if you're on a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch. With point-and-click added to The Devil's Playhouse, and full gamepad support added to the first two remasters, all input types are finally supported across the entire Sam & Max trilogy and you can play the whole series however you'd like.
- The audio quality is improved across the board, almost every piece of music has been remixed and mastered by the original composer, and there are a few new pieces here and there. The original release of The Devil's Playhouse sounded better than either of the previous seasons, but it still suffered from intense audio compression, resulting in scratchy voices and muddy sound effects. We went back to the source files and re-exported everything at far higher quality. We also worked with series composer Jared Emerson-Johnson, who dug out his original composition files, updated many of the sampled instruments to something more modern, and finished off the tracks with a new mix and mastering pass. We also brought back series regular Jordan Wardlow to record live saxophone for a few key story moments in the game that were previously MIDI synth only. ("But where is the soundtrack?" you're probably asking. It's on the way and we'll have news soon!)
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
- Nutri-Specs are available on all platforms, hidden somewhere in the game for you to find. Long ago, when The Devil's Playhouse was first in development, the Telltale team had an idea for a bonus Toy of Power that could only be found by players who solved a series of puzzles outside the game. (If any of you remember Treasure Hunting in the original release of Tales of Monkey Island, it was likely going to be something like that.) This toy, the Nutri-Specs, was a pair of glasses Max could wear to learn the nutritional content of various items in the world. It gave you a good excuse to poke around The Penal Zone and hunt for things that Max might be able to make fun of.
Unfortunately for everyone, the web game was canceled before it was finished, and as a result the Nutri-Specs were never available to PC players. On PlayStation, you received the toy after talking to the COPS early in the game.
In the remastered version, Nutri-Specs are back, available for all players on all platforms, but we have hidden them inside the game itself. Keep a lookout as you play the game, to see if you can figure out how to unlock them.
- Film grain looks nicer, and you can turn it off if you want. The Devil's Playhouse was always supposed to feel a little bit like an old movie you're watching at a rep screening (or maybe on an old haunted film projector in the basement below your office). The original release had a film grain effect that we loved, but not only was it turned on all the time, it used something like six layers of full screen transparency, which absolutely murdered the frame rate on low spec PCs and in the PlayStation and iPad ports. We've redone the film grain effect to be both more authentic and more performant, and most importantly it now has an on/off toggle in the game's settings screen for the haters.
- The game's user interface got an overhaul. We love the weird and wacky interfaces present across The Devil's Playhouse, and wanted them to truly shine in the remaster. In the case of Max Mode, we LITERALLY wanted it to shine: the Max Mode wheel has been completely rebuilt, inspired by the original concept renderings, and is now a beautiful piece of chrome glinting in the light, emitting all sorts of radiant beams and sound effects. Sam's detective notebook was also given an overhaul, with a cleaner graphic design treatment as well as fancier animations of him opening, closing, and turning the pages. And in the dialogue selection interface, Sam has gone 2D! He's now a keyframe-animated character who follows the mouse around, drawn by Calis (an artist in the animation industry) and supervised by Steve Purcell. Keep an eye out for his costume changes!
- A few lost voice lines have been restored. When working our way through the game's content, we found a few places where a line or two of dialogue were intended to play, but couldn't. This usually happened because of a bug in the game's logic that meant the right conditions for the line to be heard could never occur, or something simpler: the object in question was never on camera, so the player couldn't click on it. We've restored about a half dozen of these across the game. Other than this restoration of some lost lines, no voice recording or dialogue has been altered in the game.
Spoilers Begin Here
If you've never played The Devil's Playhouse before, we recommend you stop reading here, as the game has many story and puzzle spoilers that build on each other as it progresses. If you've played before but don't want to be spoiled by what's new so you can find it for yourself, we also recommend stopping here! If you must know all the new stuff though, read away...
[h2]Per-episode changes[/h2]
[h3]Episode 1: The Penal Zone[/h3]
- "These are completely different streets." The Devil's Playhouse takes place around Manhattan on city streets that, for budgetary reasons, were cheaply built out of shared parts instead of being unique locations. We took many of the streets around this episode and rebuilt them entirely, starting from new concept art and modeled them from scratch. When you leave Sam & Max's neighborhood and start to visit their version of New York, we wanted each destination to feel like its own unique place, and to really feel like you're getting to see the city. The flatiron building you visit now has a traffic jam and a neighborhood bodega across the street. BoscoTech Labs is now a haunted old brownstone on a sleepy neighborhood block. The toy store is nestled up against an elevated train line. Most of the streets in the original ended in dead-end alleys out of performance concerns, and we've opened many of those up to complete city blocks, to make them feel more like part of a bigger city. We also added random New Yorkers walking around in the background of some scenes to add some more life.
- Straignt & Narrow is once again straight and narrow. In the earliest days of The Devli's Playhouse development, the team thought Sam & Max's street might feature more centrally in the story, like it did in the previous games. There was a belief that it was difficult to shoot because it was so long, and a belief that it should match the rest of the (cheaply built) city street environments. As a result, the street was given a big elbow bend in the middle, and was rebuilt out of parts that had less care and attention than the original. For the remaster, we restored the street to its original un-bent, hand-built glory, using the assets from Beyond Time and Space as a starting point, and then re-added The Devil's Playhouse's special touches. Stinky's has its new paint job. Bosco's is abandoned and covered in graffiti. Sam & Max's building is boarded up following the fallout of a Maimtron 9000 attack in the last game. We took things a little further too: you can now see into the construction site next door to the office, to give the street a little continuity between games. And careful viewers will catch a glimpse of Sybil's in the opening scene before it's squished.
- The Crime-Tron got an upgrade. It's now easier to place clues directly on the scanner bed from your inventory, and the state of the scanner is far more readable. Also, when you do find a match the city map screen has gotten an overhaul inspired by cheesy motion graphics of '70s/'80s movies.
- Skun-ka'pe's ship is a little more alive. As part of our new lighting pass, you can see the sun sweeping across the bridge when Skun-ka'pe steers his ship around the city. The water in the bottle by Sam & Max's cage bobbles around. Stinky's chair is actually hovering. The bubbles in the Alien Brain's tank actually bounce and move around him. It's the little things, but we think they add up!
[h3]Episode 2: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak[/h3]
- Maximus got his hat back. Let's get the biggest news out of the way: after being relegated to the original character concept art, Maximus's little hat has finally been reunited with its rightful owner. Hat enjoyers, your day has arrived.
- The Tomb is now lit by cauldrons of flame, and is damp. If you've ever seen the original concept illustrations for the Tomb of Sammun-Mak, you may have noticed there are huge bowls of fire held aloft by the hippo statues in the center of the room, but in the original game that whole center area was dark. We've re-lit the flames for the remaster, and also added the icky pools of water surrounding the inaccessible areas at the bottom of the scene.
- Sammeth & Maximus' street got... longer? Years ago fans noticed the Esperanto Bookstore is missing from the street in the 1900s, even though it wasn't removed until a giant battle robot attacked the street in Beyond Time and Space. We put it back! It's now a brand new Esperanto newspaper store. If we hadn't said anything, we're not sure anyone would have noticed it was added, but now you know. Also, it's snowing now!
- The theater now has an establishing shot. To keep this in line with many of our other environments across the trilogy, we thought it'd be nice to add an exterior establishing shot for the theater. Does it look familiar? Maybe you've been here before... or will be here again one day, depending on your perspective.
- The mole family basement got a fresh coat of paint. The original concept of the mole people apartment showed a freshly whitewashed brick room, and we loved that look so we brought it into the game proper. Also, the basement environment is now more architecturally consistent across all its appearances in various episodes and various times in history.
[h3]Episode 3: They Stole Max's Brain![/h3]
- Flint gives you interrogation advice from his own office. Instead of appearing in front of a low-resolution brick wall, now Sam's memory is more clear and he can picture exactly what Flint's office looked like on the day he was teaching Sam how to interrogate a suspect.
- Max's brain is now sloshing around in liquid. We went back to the original concept art and learned that Max's brain was supposed to be floating in a jar of demon broth, but that got lost or cut along the way, and in the original game he was just floating mid-jar with no explanation. We added the fluid back and gave it a little satisfying slosh, as a treat.
- The city streets got a Sammun-Mak glow-up. We went through and gave the world you experience in the second half of this episode an art pass, adding detail and atmospherics wherever it made sense.
[h3]Episode 4: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls[/h3]
- The Clone Chamber is more foggy and ominous. When Ryan Jones first drew a concept of the Clone Chamber, he painted it with an eerie green haze that filled the entire back of the room, with just the lights of the clone pods shining through. This looked great, except for one problem: the Telltale engine didn't support fog at the time. Whoops! Now we have so much fog we don't know what to do with it, so we put some of it in the remastered version of the Clone Chamber, restoring Ryan's eerie glow to the place.
- The golden shorts the clones wear are sparkly. Finally!
- The lever on the toaster actually animates and the toast toasts. Finally! Wait, nobody ever noticed this before? Okay, fine. But it does do those things now.
[h3]Episode 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep[/h3]
- The hologram in BoscoTech Labs stays on for the entire episode. The hologram has always been one of our favorite details in this episode, but it was previously only used for one shot in the opening cutscene. This is a small change, but was a nice way to set this version of the environment apart from its appearances earlier in the game.
And finally...
- Cloned minions now have gold underwear, too. We're not sure how the original shipped without this, but at last with this fix, we can declare this the definitive release of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse.
