High on Life 2 Developer Interview
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that no one can agree on what’s funny. Some people hate slapstick, others enjoy pie-in-the-face physical comedy. You might like the tamest and lamest of dad jokes while your friend is down with the edgiest, profanity-laden standup comic. The upcoming High on Life 2 plays the odds. Like the first game, it throws thousands of jokes at the player and expects that at least some of them will stick the landing. If the first game is anything to go by, there’s nothing to worry about.
I spoke with Squanch Games’ Alec Robbins (Narrative Director) and Erich Meyr (Chief Design Officer) about High On Life 2. It’s a sequel to the 2022 first person shooter. No joke, Robbins said that there were over 10,000 pages of dialogue recorded by a stellar cast of actors. That cast includes regulars from Rick and Morty and other Adult Swim shows. It also tosses in some unexpected cameos from the likes of JB Smoove. A number of characters return from the first game.
Step Back
We’re getting ahead of ourselves. High on Life flew a little under the radar. It’s a combination of first person shooter, platformer and environmental puzzler, set in the near future. The Earth is invaded by the alien G3 Cartel with the purpose of harvesting humans to make mind-altering drugs. You play as a newly-minted bounty hunter, trying to kill various members of the Cartel and the end boss, Garmantuous.
In terms of shooter hooks, High on Life had a brilliant one: talking guns. Your pistol Kenny was a nonstop blend of humor, insecurity, incessant insults, fourth-wall breaking observation and game guide. It was crazy fun. All the weapons had personality, like your Australian-accented knife with off-the-charts bloodlust.
Strip all the jokes aside, and High On Life was a well-made shooter, with a coherent plot underneath the weirdness, and interesting puzzles. It had colorful, detailed environments and — for a small team — polished production values.
Step Up
Robbins and Meyr describe the sequel as bigger, funnier and even more refined. It’s a true sequel, in that it carries the premise forward, with the story sort of Big Pharma-gone-wild and corporate satire. There’s still a hub world and various locations to explore on missions but everything looks even sharper. From the looks of it, there’s exponentially more chaos, action and humor-laden mayhem.
We spent a bit of time talking about how the game’s literal nonstop humor is grounded by a more serious narrative. Still, I’m willing to bet that a pretty high percentage of those 10,000 pages contain jokes, satire and the Adult Swim-type ironic cultural observation the first game was based on. There are a ton of Easter eggs, not unlike High on Life’s FMV full-length movie within the game.
One of the more frustrating elements of the first game was that platforming felt less refined than the shooting, narrative and dialogue. Meyr said players can expect much more fluid movement this time around. Previews and early hands-on playtime seem to confirm this, with the player zipping around the world on a smooth-gliding skateboard.
The Beauty of Small
Robbins and Meyr said that while the Squanch Games team has grown to around 80, it still feels like a small indie studio, with different departments easily able to share and communicate. It also means that Meyr can still track various aspects of the production in real time. There’s no outsourcing either the art or the writing.
Snarky humor in shooters isn’t new. Games like Duke Nukem 3D — the GOAT if ever there was one — combined literal toilet humor with not-so-subtle cultural satire. High on Life 2 rests comfortably in that long tradition. What makes it stand out is the high (pardon the pun) quality of its writing and voice work, its imaginative shooter mechanics and engaging fiction and world design. High on Life 2 releases any day now, and I couldn’t be more excited to get my hands on more smack-talking guns and psychopathic knives.