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We've just pushed an update live for Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse that puts a lot of teeny tiny longstanding bugs to bed. And then once they're all tucked in sound asleep? Well, you'll see.
Also if you're looking for more Max in your life, we've spent the last year hard at work on an updated version of Poker Night at the Inventory, and it's just come out this week. Check it out:
Fixed an issue where Sal's lipsync often stopped working after his first few lines, and when it did work it wasn't fully playing on his snout.
Girl Stinky's photo in Sam's notebook has been updated to more closely match the pose and facial expression from the original game.
Fixed clicking on sliders in the UI snapping to a nearby value instead of grabbing the slider.
Fonts scale better at low resolution. If you ran the game at 720p or lower, you probably noticed that the fonts looked a little crispy. They should now look more smooth on low res displays. If you play the game at 800x600 on a CRT let us know how the fonts look.
Fixed Sam's nose briefly appearing at the edge of the screen when attempting to use the homing beacon on Skunkape.
The cardboard box at the top of the pile of Sybil's junk now has a bottom, so you can't see through it when viewed at low angles.
Sam now puts his hands in his pockets when exiting Skunkape's ship. In the original it was ambiguous whether his pockets were supposed to puff up here or if his hands were merely behind his back, but enough people mentioned it that we committed to the pocket reality. Ambiguity's for chumps.
Fixed the old timey notebook cover showing up in the opening credits by mistake.
Fixed a camera angle that got knocked into the wrong position during a late-game closeup of Papierwaite.
Fixed the camera clipping through a statue in the planetarium when using Future Vision.
Fixed the brain backpack being briefly visible when using Future Vision in the planetarium.
Fixed Frankie the Rat sometimes t-posing when returning to interrogate him multiple times.
Toned down laser lights during battle cutscenes in the planetarium when flashing VFX are set to off.
Fixed Rhinoplasty visual effects not lining up with Max when he is transformed into a cake.
Fixed sorting of Max's muzzle flash when firing his gun in the opening cutscenes.
Fixed Charlie's eyebrows sometimes going insane and getting extra fuzzy looking.
Fixed Charlie's eyebrows sometimes disappearing behind themselves. Charlie's eyebrows had a lot going on before this patch.
Fixed Charlie sometimes becoming visible again after skipping lines.
Fixed the Narrator's eyebrows sometimes snapping to the wrong position before transitioning to their new expression. This is a very eyebrow-forward patch, it turns out.
Fixed Grandpa Stinky's truck being very briefly visible in Max's hand at the wrong time in the opening credits montage.
Fixed Maimtron visibly stopping while flying during the opening credits montage.
Fixed Sam not looking at the flaming Max head when talking to it in the stomach.
Fixed some instances where Sybil's eyes were looking in the wrong place due to animations and dynamic look-ats fighting with each other.
Fixed instances where hidden characters would appear briefly when skipping lines during on-screen radio scenes.
As always, thanks for letting us know when you find a bug. If you've got a bug that you've encountered but don't see it here, please let us know in the comments and we'll do our best to squash it.
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!
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!)
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!
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.
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:
A pair of Max slippers from Uncute (currently sold out!)
A talking Strong Bad plush (also sold out!)
A portrait of Tycho painted by Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik (truly one of a kind!)
A Team Fortress 2 poster signed by Valve employees (the envy of all your friends!)
Your entry must include at least one of the four characters.
Your entry doesn’t have to relate to poker… but we might like it more if it does. 👀
Any creative endeavor is welcome, be it fan art, cosplay, sculpture, video, music, needle arts, food, etc. We love entries that surprise us.
Too many ideas? Can’t decide which is best? No problem! Enter as many times as you want (but you can only win once).
AI-generated assets and images will not be considered. We want to see stuff made entirely by you!
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.
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).
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.
So break out those crayons, scissors, and welding torches, and make something that will wow us!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And… we want YOU to win one!
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.
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.
(If you like behind-the-scenes stuff, Steve described his process for creating this artwork on Facebook.)
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!
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.