Surprise remaster
Poker Night at the Inventory was a game that nobody really asked for, but became a minor cult hit when Telltale Games released it in late 2010. The goofy Texas Hold’em sim involving characters from other video games was unserious and imperfect, but most importantly, it was fun. For five bucks, it was worth a go because it would put a smile on your face, but even with a sequel a few years later, it didn’t really have staying power. Then, in 2019, it was delisted from Steam.
But now it’s back. Skunkape Games, a game studio created by former Telltale developers, announced on Wednesday that a remastered version of Poker Night at the Inventory is coming March 5, 2026.
According to the game’s Steam store page, Poker Night at the Inventory has received a “top-to-bottom visual refresh,” with better animations, higher resolution character models, and more dynamic lighting, the kinds of graphic improvements one would expect more than 15 years later.
The game is more customizable, as well. Players can adjust the amount of table talk they want to hear from the characters, table stakes can be raised or lowered, and graphic options can be fine-tuned.
And maybe most importantly for poker fans, the remastered game will “actually follow the rules of poker.” Not that the original didn’t, but it was a bit buggy when it came to the poker mechanics. With the remaster, “Poker Night at the Inventory now plays a far more accurate game of poker, and your opponents will make more informed decisions that better fit their play style and personality.”
Enjoy the unseriousness
The developers called the original Poker Night at the Inventory an “experimental casual game,” based on the idea that video game characters had lives outside of the games they were in. What did they do when they were “off the clock?”
The game features four characters: The Heavy (aka Heavy Weapons Guy) from Team Fortress 2, Max from the Same & Max series (also remastered by Skunkape), Strong Bad from the Homestar Runner web series, and Tycho Brahe from the Penny Arcade web comic. Each has their own personality, expansive dialogue, and play style.
One feature that will return with the remaster: unlockable Team Fortress 2 items. Each character has a unique item – The Heavy’s “Iron Curtain” gun, for example – that becomes yours in TF2 if you beat them at the poker table.
As you win Sit-and-Go’s against the opponent characters, you can unlock things like custom card decks and new table designs. Some of them can actually affect the game, so while Poker Night at the Inventory isn’t the deepest poker sim ever made, it does have replayability. Mostly, though, it’s just a fun, silly, inexpensive poker game where you can actually be entertained by the trash talk.
Image credit: Dan Katz (in-game screenshot)
