Based on Steve Purcell‘s comic book series Sam & Max, the game follows the title characters Sam and Max—self-styled vigilante private investigators, the former an anthropomorphic dog and the latter a “hyperkinetic rabbity thing”—through several cases involving a hypnotism conspiracy. Each episode features one case with a contained story, with an underlying plot running through the series. The game was announced by Telltale Games in 2005 following the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police by LucasArts in the preceding year; many of the employees at Telltale Games were members of the Freelance Police development team.