One of the strangest games of 2022, High on Life, will receive a physical release for the first time on September 19. This physical edition of a shooter starring obnoxious talking guns extends its humorous creative liberties to its cover art. Along with a half-peeled alien “sticker,” the phrase “Game of the Year” is hastily scrawled on a faux duct-taped label. From a player interest perspective, High on Life essentially was the GOTY on Xbox Game Pass. At the end of 2022, Microsoft confirmed High on Life was the biggest launch of the year on the subscription service. It also held the title as the biggest third-party release on the service until Palworld stole the crown earlier this year.
Published by Limited Run Games, the physical edition of High on Life comes with the base game and the High on Knife expansion. This edition was initially revealed back in February as a Limited Run Games’ store exclusive, but it sold out pretty fast. If you didn’t snag a copy then, preorders are now live at Amazon. Presently, only the PS5 version is available to preorder. Fans of High on Life can also preorder the official graphic novel follow-up ahead of its publication later this year.
Limited Run was also taking preorders on a cool collector’s edition earlier this year, but it too wasn’t available for long before all copies were snapped up. In case you missed it when it first came out, High on Life was a pretty colorful action game and a solid debut from Squanch Games, which was co-founded by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland. It’s worth noting that Roiland resigned from the studio after domestic violence allegations against him were revealed shortly after the game’s release, but the studio continues to operate without him.
As you’d expect, the game features a really weird plot about an alien cartel using humans as drugs–or basically, it riffs on that one season of Torchwood. As a bounty hunter tasked with taking down the menace, you’ll wield various talking guns with colorful personalities. Also, some of your firearms deliver so much foul language that they’d make a sailor blush. The High on Knife expansion is set a few years after the events of the main game, and kindly asks you to help the homicidal Knifey track down a mysterious package from his homeworld.
“Ultimately, High On Life is, in its own weird way, a take on what a modern Metroid Prime game could be, through the lens of Justin Roiland’s comedy antics,” Jason Fanelli wrote in GameSpot’s High on Life review. “There’s a similar sense of exploration mixed with fast-paced moments of combat, only here it’s also swelling with expletive-laden jokes and sometimes incoherent rambling.”
If you’d like to explore the universe of the game even further, the official graphic novel collects all four issues of the comic book series and is also set after the game, as humanity finds itself being hunted by a mysterious being. It’s up to the Bounty Hunter to once again bring justice to the stars. The four-issue arc mixes in a tale of redemption and zany cosmic violence for good measure.
Lastly, you can check how the game came to be with The Art of High on Life, an official hardcover art book that released in March. It features nearly 200 pages of full-color illustrations of the game’s strange creatures, weird worlds, and grotesque gunplay, as well as expert commentary from Squanch Games.
