Telltale Games's Dan Connors on bringing Sam & Max to iPad

One of the surprises of the iPad launch was the unheralded arrival of Telltale Games's Sam & Max point and click adventure game.

So with the next episode in The Devil's Playhouse series due this week, we caught up with Telltale's CEO and co-founder Dan Connors to find out how the studio was dealing with bringing games to iPad, as well as its wider plans for iDevices.

Dan Connors: We're a storytelling company first and foremost, so the set-up for The Devil's Playhouse in the Penal Zone is going to give players a solid understanding of the world, characters and situation Sam & Max have gotten themselves into.

As the series progresses, you'll see a lot more focus on puzzle solving elements, using Max's new psychic powers and your wits to get out of tricky situations

Well, a good portion of the team has been working on the series since the beginning. Telltale was founded by two LucasArts veterans (me and Kevin Bruner) so the team is pretty familiar with the franchise and what makes it work. Mike Stemmle and Dave Grossman are two Telltalers who worked on Hit the Road and other classic franchises

Our tool is pretty versatile and we were already working on the Penal Zone for Mac and PC, so it was a pretty smooth transition in bringing the game to the iPad.

It was mostly a matter of our engineering team wrapping their minds around the hardware, which they didn't have a whole lot of time to do. So in the timing sense, it was a pretty busy few weeks for the team getting the game ready for launch day

Yes, we kept it quiet deliberately, which was tough because it was such an exciting project and we wanted to yell about it from the rooftops.

The opportunity to be a launch title on the device presented itself pretty quickly, and it turned out to be something that we couldn't pass up.

What it came down to was that it's a brand new device for everyone, and the first mobile platform that Telltale's ever developed for, so there are going to be some bugs for nearly every game that was there on launch day.

Luckily Apple makes it very easy for its developers to update their products, and we're working on a patch that will solve the problems people have encountered.

We hope so. It's an amazing device and our games just feel right on the iPad.

Traditionally, with the types of products we've created, it would have been difficult to give users the same Telltale experience on an iPhone that they'd get on a PC, Mac or console.

Actually we just announced our first iPhone title - Nelson Tethers Puzzle Agent. It's slated for release this June, and we're also bringing it to the iPad, Mac and PC.

It's the first instalment in our Pilot Program, single episodes meant to showcase the creative talents of our studio by producing quirky and interesting game worlds.

We're putting our foot in the water with The Penal Zone, so we'll see what happens.

But so far, we're really impressed with the platform and think it's a great way for users to experience our games. Again, it really feels like the device was made for our titles.

The next instalment, Sam & Max Episode 2: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak is slated for release on May 18th.