You could regard The Tomb of Sammon-Mak as a sort of time warping adventure, since the "interactive movie" theme works almost identically to time jumping from the previous episode. Players will also be take the roles of Sammus and Maximus, both of whom bear strong resemblances to their successors, and leap headfirst into a comical film noir adventure. It also turns out psychic ability ability runs in the family. Players can select "Astral Projection" from his collection of psychic abilities to access the projector and load in a different reel of film. During the adventure, Maximus picks up a few other tricks including the ability to fit into a novelty gag can of nuts and throw his voice. Whether or not ventriloquism is actually a psychic power is often questioned within the game itself. Even after you figure out what order the film reels should be played in, things can still get a little surreal as players jump back and forth between chapters for clues. In the case of Sam & Max, movie spoilers are critical to completing the game. However, we ended up finishing some of the middle sections before the beginning, so there was a brief period of weirdness as we got the story elements straightened out. Fortunately, there's a short recap of highlights at the end.

Characters making a return include Santa Claus and his gang of elves looking to get their hands on the Devil's Toy Box (to gain an extra edge in the toy market) and baby Amelia Earhart, who (as far as we can figure) is in it for fun, fame and adventure. Players also find out how Jurgen picked up his vampiric condition. Lastly, this is one of the few Sam & Max games where the characters are in danger of dying... right before being rewound to a checkpoint. Since there's no real death penalty to speak of, discovering the results of some of these death traps can be as much fun as figuring out how to bypass them.

Although the game has plenty of humor and very clever puzzles, including a few where players have to use magical curses to their advantage and overcome obstacles, there aren't that many psychic abilities for Maximus to toy around with. In fact, there are only the two, not counting Astral Projection. Most puzzles are relatively easy to figure out, although figuring how to get cursed requires a little bit of dialogue exploration. The curses help liven things up, but on the other hand, the characters end up using them to play the same trick on baby Amelia Earhart three times.

The in-game hint system is a bit unreliable, even when set to maximum. It works well for the most part, but wasn't very helpful during the finale, when we needed it the most. Maximus kept repeating a hint for a section we already figured out. Meanwhile, Sammus is left dangling over a pit of flesh eating ants and everything looks like they're far out of his reach, so we became frustrated because we couldn't figure out one key component to the puzzle. Despite this hiccup, we ended up enjoying the experience. The story is satisfying, there are a number of new places to visit, and the puzzles are generally fun and challenging. Most of all, there's a cliff hanger ending that leaves fans eager for the next episode to release.