High on Life is the crazy shooter created by one of the authors of Rick & Morty that conquered the Xbox Game Pass

High on Life is the crazy shooter created by one of the authors of Rick &

One of the advantages of the Xbox Game Pass is the possibility of promoting video games that would normally have a hard time getting known or even being made (as in the case of Pentiment ) with the standard publishing process. For this reason it sometimes happens that a little known and advertised title, often because it is indie and without the right means to do so, happens to be on Microsoft's subscription service and is discovered by the millions of subscribers who make it viral in a short time. This happened recently with High on Life , an indie title from Squanch Games released exclusively on Xbox and PC in mid-December, and which has already become one of the most played titles on Xbox Game Pass .

The game is basic a simple shooter, but with some special features that have allowed him to achieve great fame in a short time. Squanch Games, the software house that made the video game, was in fact founded by Justin Roiland, one of the creators of Rick & Morty, the very famous Adult Swim show which in a few years, thanks to its irreverent and very over the top comedy, has achieved enormous popularity. High on Life therefore could not fail to re-propose this kind of comedy within a video game and, as expected, the results were crazier than one might think.

Talking weapons

The story of High on Life , although not connected in any way to that of Rick & Morty , has themes and, above all, a comic style very similar to the show animated . Planet Earth is attacked by a gang of drug trafficking aliens who intend to use human beings as… drugs indeed. These alien beings led by the dangerous Garmantuous, take humans to smoke them as if they were joints. Our protagonist will be a high school student who ends up by chance thrown into this intergalactic mess and will find himself having to play the hero to save the world from this bizarre alien menace. Obviously he will not be alone, but he will have an arsenal of weapons capable of speaking on his side.

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These weapons are in fact called the Gatliani , sentient weapons that won't shut up for a second throughout the adventure. In total there are five and range from mucus guns to highly destructive shotguns, up to knives with a strong killer instinct. These weapons, our fundamental travel companions, will be the real protagonists of the game, as they will continue to talk and comment on everything that happens on the screen with often hilarious results. For example, mucus gun Kenny, voiced by Roiland himself with a voice that matches Morty's, will complain to us about pausing the game by breaking the fourth wall, which will happen often throughout the adventure.

The comedy of High on Life is therefore the strong point of the game. The story, in its duration of about ten hours, will continually offer us absurd and not very "politically correct" situations and various parodies of different works of pop culture with the typical humor of Roiland and his works. One thing's for sure, High on Life is a laugh from start to finish, which is precisely why players loved it so much.

The formula for success

Present Since day one on Xbox Game Pass, in this case on December 13, High on Life has had a series of successes one after the other . It first became the most played Microsoft subscription service title on the Cloud, but it only took a few days to make it the best launch of 2022 on Xbox Game Pass , surpassing major competitors such as A Plague Tale: Requiem , Persona 5 Royale , Pentiment and many other. The game is also currently the best launch for a third party title and the best launch for a single player game on Xbox Game Pass. As if that weren't enough, the success of the title also arrived on Steam, where in its launch week it became the best-selling title, overtaking even giants such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Fifa 23 for a few days.

There is no real main reason for this incredible success, the game itself is basically a normal shooter with nothing really innovative apart from its comic vein. It was probably the right game at the right time , thanks to the combination of various factors, between the humor of the author of Rick & Morty and the pull he had among the fans of the show, the fact that it was free for all subscribers of Xbox Game Pass and a comedic story that works well and that there is actually a shortage in the world of video games. In fact, humorous titles are a rarity and deserve much more space, and High on Life has shown that making people laugh always works, even in the world of video games. Therefore, after Pentiment, the Xbox Game Pass once again offers itself as an alternative to standard development models, bringing alternative titles whose success demonstrates how much there is a need for new ways of creating video games in the market.