Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

About this game

An ancient, terrible power lies waiting…

Max has always been the more unhinged member of the Freelance Police—a lovable lunatic with a knack for spreading chaos wherever he goes. But recently his abilities have taken a supernatural turn.

It all started when he stumbled upon a mysterious toy that allows him to glimpse the future. Now Sam & Max have aroused the attention of a host of villains from across the galaxy who are hellbent on acquiring the magical Toys of Power to achieve their own ends.

As those who seek the Devil’s Toybox close in and Max’s psychic abilities grow beyond his control, the Freelance Police will come up against their most frightening adversary yet: the power of Max’s mind.

FEATURES

• A bizarre paranormal adventure: Explore odd locales, meet eccentric characters, and solve brain-tickling puzzles in an interactive story with a surprise around every corner.
  
• Rabbity-thing mind meld: Jump into Max’s brain and use the Toys of Power to see the future, teleport, read minds, and other tricks.
  
• No walkthrough required: The game detects when you’re stuck and provides subtle hints.
  
• Beautifully remastered: Lighting, lip-sync, cinematography, music, and more have been updated and enhanced to bring Telltale’s 2010 episodic season up to modern standards.
  
• Last in a trilogy: See the episodic Sam & Max series through to its epic conclusion.

Latest news

• Patch Notes·5 Mar 2026Official

  Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse 1.7.0 Update

  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:Patch notes for today’s Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse update (version 1.7.0): All Episodes: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.Episode 301: The Penal ZoneFixed 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.Episode 302: The Tomb of Sammun-MakFixed 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.Episode 303: They Stole Max's Brain!Fixed the camera clipping through a statue in the planetarium when using Fut...
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• Community & Events·4 Feb 2026Official

  Arts & Crafts Contest: Poker Night Edition

  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!)What’s in it for me?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!)The Fine PrintYour 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 intern...
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• Announcements·18 Sept 2025Official

  Twenty years have gone so fast…

  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.An Episodic Sociopathic LagomorphThe 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. Speaking of Posters...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 wi...
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• Announcements·23 Apr 2025Official

  Making the Devil's Playhouse Soundtrack cover with Steve Purcell

  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. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44770555/b75a92c8a2ffcf24f1cbfaf0996a83fc1e8b828e.jpg{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44770555/81e4d9871367bde4cf1af172659762bdec378359.jpg{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44770555/d13f047848da9ecf40ccf50d9bdc3303a4f9bd35.jpg{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44770555/b32e936e0dffd26e6ee0e3bbb14283ea243963df.jpg{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44770555/65900f77dad4f0f8df2b261e06a73f7fedddc6cd.jpg With a logo and text assist by Jake Rodkin and some texturing applied, here’s what we wound up with… {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44770555/e524d6116911b7c60cb29aae59958dc7cc4e093f.jpg 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.
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• Patch Notes·21 Apr 2025Official

  Devil's Playhouse Soundtrack: Now with FLAC and an extra track!

  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!
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