If I say the words “High On Life” to you, chances are you felt very strongly one way or another about the 2022 shooter.
While the game itself was a solid bounty-hunting shooter, how you felt about Squanch Games’ brand of humor likely informed how you felt about the game overall. The game received criticism for its comedic stylings, but high sales and a dedicated fanbase made up for a middling critical reception.
Fridley explains that “the humor is our sense of humor,” adding that, “I think it would be very detrimental to ourselves and our sanity, but also just detrimental to our business model, to try and chase making everybody laugh. Generally, those end up being kind of watered down, very generic, safe games.” And as someone who wound up very in the middle when it came to the original – mostly down to finding Roiland’s Morty-like voice for the main gun Kenny being extremely grating – Squanch sticking to its guns is an understandable move. “The first game did 25 million players,” Fridley explains, “I think it’d be a mistake to chase the folks that we probably will never convince that we’re funny.”
Mike Fridley
Mike Fridley has been in game development for around two decades, working across a number of games and studios. His previous work includes games such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, the NBA Live series, and, of course, both High on Life games.
Pretending I’m a Superman
But behind the jokes, High On Life has a ton of potential. The bounty hunting first-person shooter (FPS) felt like it definitely took cues from the criminally overlooked Oddworld: Strangers Wrath – which I did have confirmed, as Fridley said it was “definitely an inspiration” – but it also felt like something was missing.
I wouldn’t call it clunky, but it didn’t feel quite as crisp or frantic as some of its contemporaries at the time – especially when it came to movement speed. And with Doom: The Dark Ages slowing the iconic FPS way down, I’m excited to see Squanch speed things up, thanks to a nice bit of wood on wheels.
Roiland’s Kenny was understandably removed when he left the studio, and while Fridley explained that this is “a conscious choice” to not have him around, “he hasn’t officially been killed off either.”
After being considered for the original game, Squanch introduced skateboarding to the sequel, “We were like, let’s mess around with that just as a side mechanic – probably a mini game or something like that – and we started to fall in love with it.” Soon, the team started designing with it in mind, “It was like, ‘we want to make every level skateable’. And then it became like, ‘Okay, let’s just replace the sprint with the skateboard and see how that feels’.”
And after “a lot of internal and external playtesting,” Squanch landed on the game’s current speed to a level “where it felt like firing multiple weapons while traveling on a skateboard rail, grinding at that speed could all be done and processed in a way that felt like skillful, but also not like Dark Souls, skillful, where it’s like too hard.”
And while I’ve not got my hands on High On Life 2 yet (check out our High On Life 2 preview for that), Fridley did inspire confidence in me by letting me know, “I go back and play the first one now that I’ve been playing the second one, and it feels like I’m running molasses,” adding, “This is, I think, the speed the game was always supposed to be. And it’s great that we kind of found that eventually.”
Gun Game
Despite playing as a voiceless protagonist, Squanch opted to make High On Life 2 a direct sequel to the original, as opposed to making it an anthology series.
While it was “definitely something we talked about,” the team realised that the Gatlians – the weird sentient guns that chat with you throughout the adventure – are the way that the story is told.
“Not having Sweezy or not having Gus, for example, in the second game would feel like it wasn’t a High On Life game,” Fridley explains. Of course, that leaves the elephant in the room, as Roiland’s Kenny was understandably removed when he left the studio, and while Fridley explained that this is “a conscious choice” to not have him around, “he hasn’t officially been killed off either.”
And on top of that, replacing the cast would mean replacing the guns. “We’re trying to be comedy character focused” Fridley notes, and on top of that “you still need a short range weapon that does X, Y and Z.” If the team were to replace Gus, for example, the team would still need a new shotgun character, but as Fridley explains, “we just love the characters, and we love the actors that do them. So it was kind of a no-brainer there.”
For a game that places so much emphasis on its Gatlians the guns themselves weren’t entirely unique. Some like B.A.L.L and The Creature showed that they could be interesting, but the guns very much fell into the Pistol, Shotgun, and SMG archetypes. “There’s some non-traditional stuff there, but we want, we want the players to both feel that everything’s a little bit off, but also feel a little familiar.”
Fridley explains that some of these still fit into the mold of classic FPS weapons, with the Ralph Ineson-voiced Sheath, which is described as a Halo Battle Rifle; and there’s an unannounced bow, which Fridley also describes as “typical.” However, he notes, “both of their alternate abilities and their special attacks are outside of what you would normally think of for those archetypes.”
Multiplatform madness
Obviously, the first game did extremely well on the platform, with Xbox VP Aaron Greenberg calling it a “breakout hit,” but High On Life 2 seems like a big step up from the original in scale, so I was curious as to what Sqaunch thought about returning to Xbox Game Pass. While Fridley notes “it was definitely part of the consideration” this time around, Microsoft’s help with the original game made it somewhat of a no-brainer to return, he explains, “what we found on the first time around was Microsoft and Xbox support their game pass games very heavily.”
Fridley continues, “does the exposure outweigh the potential cannibalization of sales? We’re not sure, but it does, for sure, help establish an IP so getting a bunch of people to play your game,” adding, “if your game’s good and you want to be a bunch of people to play it, getting it on Game Pass is great.” And despite the success of the original, Fridley explains “we’re still in a franchise building mode” where the relatively new studio “want as many people to know about Squanch” and “the best way to do that is to give it away and get as many people with their hands on it as possible.”
Despite the launch on Xbox Game Pass, High On Life actually shines brightest elsewhere, “shockingly even after the 14 month delay on Sony launch – because of an exclusivity clause with the first game that Microsoft had – it’s [PS5] still our lead platform,” Fridley told me. And when asked if that was a factor in the sequel getting a simultaneous launch on PlayStation, he said, “That was a no-brainer, like our lead platform is Sony, Steam is right behind it as far as units sold.”
“If you’re a PlayStation player, you’re going to buy it on PlayStation. You’re not going to play it on Game Pass” Fridley continues, “and with the recent subscription increase on Game Pass, I’m sure they’ve probably seen subscriber numbers go down a bit; so those people have to play it somewhere.” He explains, “It was kind of an easy business decision, as far as just looking at sales numbers on the first one and not having that exclusivity this time around to launch it on all platforms,” and even outside of sales, “it’s just cheaper. We don’t have to do two marketing pushes… we’re just piggybacking off our own marketing to sell the same copy.”
High On Life 2 launches today on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S (with a Nintendo Switch 2 release set for April 20. Even as someone who didn’t totally get on with the original, I’m somewhat optimistic for this sequel. You can expect my review to go live in the near future to see how that went for me.
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