The two begin their adventure in their office, thwarted by a dastardly kidnapping...of their telephone, by the local rodent mafia. The game will use the traditional point-and-click mouse interface you might expect from an adventure game, though Telltale assures us that all the game's environments will be highly interactive (if nothing else, clicking on an object will elicit a humorous observation from Sam or Max), and that the game will use a context-sensitive cursor that will switch to a different icon, to minimize the annoying "pixel hunting" you might have seen in other games.

Clicking around the office in search of the missing phone eventually reveals the hole-in-the-wall home of Jimmy Two-Teeth, a shifty character whose job as an informant makes him a professional rat (while his gray fur and stringy tail make him, you know, an actual rat). We watched the game's dynamic "dual dialogue" system in action as the craven cavy was grilled with polite, restrained inquiries from Sam and more-violent suggestions from Max. Apparently, Jimmy Two-Teeth is a tough nut to crack and doesn't sing for anyone--except when a question from Sam reveals that the informant is afraid of heights, which gives Max the option to dangle their captive by his tail out the window until he talks. Using this good-cop/bad-cop routine can help Sam and Max advance the story and acquire key items, like their trusty big, blocky rotary telephone, which they recover from the tiny rat's person (in a scene that is, thankfully, censored).