Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse - Beyond the Alley of the Dolls Demo

Sometimes, things that don’t make sense provide the audience with a hefty portion of fun, especially in the case of comedies. While it is true that not everyone is amused by pointless humor, there is a large enough audience out there not to worry about it. However, games like this still need to feature a solid selection of features, otherwise no amount of surrealism can make up for a horrible story.

Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse - Beyond the Alley of the Dolls is an episode in the third season of the comical adventure series produced by Telltale, and it is by far the most outrageous. Hence, mind-reading and teleportation are day-to-day activities in this season, while the cases seem to be even more scandalous, if that were possible.

As such, the story starts with the two detectives running from what appears to be a horde of Sam zombies, clones, or perhaps robots. They take refuge in Stinky’s diner and they must find a way to get out alive, preferably in one piece as well. Hence, your role is to help the two figure out how to escape and try to unravel the mystery behind the zombies, although don’t expect it to make any kind of sense when you finally do.

While the first two seasons of the series featured classic point-and-click mechanics, things are a bit different in the third one, because the developers let their imagination run wild this time around. Hence, you can know play with Sam from a third-person perspective and use the keyboard to move around the environment. On the other hand, you still have to use point-and-click mechanics in order to interact with the surrounding objects.

As far as the actual technical aspect is concerned, the series has evolved steadily over the years, but it didn’t get too far. Naturally, the animations and the character models have been improved, as have the animations and the array of post-processing effects, but the actual graphic style remained the same. The same is true for the voice acting, since it sports the same quality and enthusiasm as it did in the beginning.

When it’s all said and done, there’s no reason not to enjoy this episode in the Sam & Max series, especially if you are a long-time admirer of the two detectives. Hence, Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse - Beyond the Alley of the Dolls is just as wild, crazy, illogical, and funny as the rest of the episodes, albeit not the best of them.