Happy Holidays Sam & Max Fans!

We truly appreciate all your love and support as we make this game! We hope everyone has a great holiday in some form or fashion.

For this next post, I wanted to move on to the meat and potatoes of why I started this blog. One reason was to let you get to know the people making this game (expect some guest posts from other team members soon). But the other was to give people a little insight into what type of game we are making.

Let’s start by talking about what this game has in it, with some help from Mike Stemmle, our lead designer and resident Sam & Max historian:

A story, replete with a beginning, middle, end, prologue, epilogue, foreshadowing, antagonists, climaxes, and even a smidge of character development.
Puzzles, conundrums, fetch quests, and other classic brain bogglers.
Staggering environments that will make your eyeballs bleed into your headsets.
Jokes, japes, jibes, and random bits of silliness.

In short, everything you expect in a Sam & Max game.

But that’s not all (wait, there’s more!). Did I mention this is a VR game? VR presents new opportunities for gameplay and allows us to explore new territory with our furry friends. We wanted to lean into the things that make VR great. As soon as we put ourselves in Sam & Max’s office, we knew we had to play alongside them, not as them. We wanted to reach out and touch them, and everything in their office. We wanted to pick up stuff and throw it at them (and we did!)

Way back, when we began conceiving of a Sam & Max VR game, we did actually put a lot of thought into designing a traditional adventure game in VR. But something was just off. For starters, given the nature of VR, it did not feel right to play as or “be” Sam or Max. Players would miss seeing them together throughout the game, interacting with each other, and doing what we are used to seeing Sam & Max do. And it’s one thing to make dialogue choices for them, but to be playing as them in first person, not seeing them, hearing them speaking as you and not seeing them, was odd and tbh, boring as heck. Another mechanic we found problematic were traditional long dialogue tree conversations where dialogue UI and text is slapped over the screen. VR is an incredibly immersive experience. You feel like you are in the world. When text like this is placed over the screen, that immersion is broken quickly. So after a lot of trial and error, we settled into what I would call “VR Adventure” mechanics for parts of the game. There are conversations, but it plays out in a more fluid, natural way.

So Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual! is a VR game, made for VR. It leans into what we love about VR games and all the things that make them fun. And then adds in a story, Sam & Max, and all the hilarity that brings with it. The game evolves, and you will want to keep playing to see what happens.

If you did not see our new gameplay footage, check it out here!

So What Happens??

You play as …. you! For the first time, you stand toe-to-toe (paw-to-toe?) with Sam & Max, and it’s oddly satisfying. It’s 2021 … and Sam & Max have been doing this a long time now. Sam has convinced Max to begrudgingly begin taking on new cadets to train for the next generation of Freelance Police. After putting you through some basic aptitude tests (i.e. making Sam coffee, nuking Max’s Lunch, or clearing out cockroaches from their closet), they take you over to an old abandoned amusement park on the outskirts of town. Sam & Max have “retrofitted” Capn Aquabear’s FunTime Park into a set of death defying (and life affirming) challenges the player must make their way through. Players will tackle the “Courses” in the 3 parts, and be graded on their performance. A passing grade will unlock the next section. But as usual, “life” gets in the way. Real crimes are taking place that cannot be ignored. And as you earn Sam & Max’s trust (ok mainly Sam’s), they will take you with them out into the real world, to solve crimes, thwart bad guys, and tell you where to get the best pedicure. Amazingly, the skills you have been honing in the Park come in handy as you take on the city’s seedier elements. Everything is going just swimmingly as you approach your big graduation day. But nothing is ever that simple for Sam & Max, is it? And you are now along for the ride! We don’t want to spoil all the goods here, so I will just end this here before I give away too much.

Until next time, Mike Levine, HappyGiant, Lead Poobah

Sam and Max VR Dev Blog Post 2 - "What is this Game"?