Chris InglisSam & Max: Beyond Time and Space is an episodic point-and-click adventure game by Skunkape Games and released on Steam, Xbox and Nintendo Switch on December 9, 2021. My first entry into the Sam & Max world was in 1993 with Sam & Max: Hit The Road by LucasArts and Double Fine. Beyond Time and Space is a follow up to 2020’s Sam & Max: Save The World remaster of the 2007 original.
The graphical and audio improvements in Sam & Max: Save The World were outstanding, with the same great humour and whacky fun to be had. As soon as I heard the voices of Sam and Max, I was taken back to my time playing the original. Skunkape, made up of four ex-TellTale Games developers, has raised the bar again in this Season Two, Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space, doing more amazing work on camera angles, enhancing sound and music and visual enhancements galore. I feel it looks so much crisper and cleaner than Save the World.
Every character and each scene have been remade from the ground up with additional lighting and effects to really make the characters stand out with smoother animations. In doing this, they were able to change camera angles where appropriate to give more depth, and more character background information for keen-eyed gamers. An example is right at the start in the office of Sam and Max. In the back of their office has always been a hole. This looked into Flint Paper’s office, and now we’re able to get a better look at Flint which better resembles the comic book version based off Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell’s feedback.
Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space features five crazy episodes ranging from the freelance police Sam & Max dealing with a crazed Santa, trying to stop a volcano from exploding and even travelling through space, which is all par for the course for this dynamic duo. There were many moments throughout the game where I got stuck and had to use the age-old methods of using every inventory item on everything that I thought could be useful and am not ashamed to admit I reached for a walkthrough on occasion. I was glad though to be able to repeat some of the driving challenges where in the originals, if you didn’t get all collectibles in those sequences the first time, you’d have to try again on a separate play through.
The humour of these games, and the point-and-click genre in general, is the biggest appeal to me and I was chuckling away to myself often. I can see how newcomers to the series may call it cheesy but that’s the humour in games I had growing up. It’s good harmless cheesy fun and must have been a pleasure for the developers to be able to go through and remaster, and sometimes re-record the voice acting for the dialogue. The pace of the game may also be a turn off for some, with lots of backtracking between locations and repeated discussions with characters once you learn new information, but again that appeals to me in these games. I did enjoy the mini-games like the boxing rats and driving the DeSoto was very cool, with enhancements made to the street and buildings.
Overall, Skunkape have done yet another amazing remaster with Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space across visuals, audio, and gameplay elements. It’s a remaster done extremely well and enhancing what was already a cool game, bringing it to modern gamers and supporting their technology. If you’re just jumping into these games, I would recommend going back to Sam & Max: Save the World as the links and jokes between characters and episodes needs background referencing. I’m already looking forward to Season Three titled Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse which has been teased on the Skunkape website.
This review utilised a Steam key provided by Emily Morganti and Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space is available to play now on Steam, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Owners of the game on Steam can also get the original 2007/08 Sam & Max Season Two episodes as free DLC.
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Yonan
