Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - We Play High on Life 2 Early! - Gamescast Plays
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What's up, everybody, and welcome to your kind of funny games cast plays for Wednesday, February 11th,
2006.
I'm one of your show host, Snowbike, Mike, and today we're going to game.
That's right.
I got the crew together.
I got Nick Scarpino.
Hello, Mike.
I got Blessing out of E.
Jr.
On the sticks.
On the sticks.
We're going with a gamer this time.
Yeah.
We got a gamer actually gaming and then two interviewers going on right now.
I don't know if he's all the Neo3 games cast plays.
I don't know if you want to call me a gamer.
I was not looking good on that one.
I'm very excited about this, Bless, because today we,
we got the guys from Squanch Games to come in and talk about High on Life 2, which is your games cast plays for the day.
We're going to be playing the opening about an hour of the game and interviewing the team from Squant's Games talking about that team.
I got Alec Robbins, the narrative director in the building and my main man, Mikey, the creative director for High on Life 2.
Mikey, welcome back. It's great to see you again.
Thanks.
It's awesome to see you guys.
Hair looks good.
Thank you.
I'm going on this time.
I like that.
The older I get, the stupid.
I'm going to keep that right my heart.
I need some tattoos.
I'm ready to get it.
I'm ready.
I'll go with you right after this.
We'll go get a tattoo right.
Mike, don't you start with me.
You know what?
You make your third game, we'll do it together.
You'll get your third game.
See how I got it down the road?
We're writing this down.
That's a piece of bed right there.
What are you doing after this, Mike?
You know what? We'll come back on the show and do it on the show.
Deal. Mikey, you got a deal for that.
Okay.
Alec, how are you?
Welcome in. Thanks for your time, my man.
My pleasure. No.
tattoos, but I'll get one with you.
Let's know.
Yeah.
There we go.
That's a real deal right there.
All right.
I'm all down to that.
Guys, congratulations.
High on Life 2.
Releasing, of course, February 13th,
2020s coming to all consoles and platforms and
Switch 2.
It says April 20th.
Yes.
Shout out.
We picked a good day.
Great day for that.
How are we feeling ahead of launch?
Perfect.
I'm saying.
Good, man.
Like, I'm usually really stressed at launch.
And this time, like,
I just like the game
I think it's good
our team's really good
everybody's been really dedicated to it
and you know there's that period
where you're kind of scared
is it actually going to come together
and then at the very end
it all just came together
you know and I think we're all really proud of it
and it's really cool
yeah I mean
we made the game we wanted to make
I'm feeling so zen right now
there's nothing else I can do
so it's just it's gonna come out
it's gonna be exactly what we made
I'm proud of it
and I think people are gonna like it
But like I finally got over that hump where I've been looking into like hyper-focused parts of the game and not being able to see it as a whole.
And then like this month, every time I pick it up and play it as a player, I'm going like, oh, you know what?
We nailed it.
I got to have it.
I got to be so difficult to do with the development cycle.
That's like as long as a game we make.
How long was this?
How long were you guys in debt for this?
Two and a half years we said?
Yeah, two and a half years.
The initial goal was two years.
but once we got in development, we were like,
okay, this is a little bigger than we were planning,
but we wanted to do it,
so we gave ourselves a little more time.
Still nowhere near enough time to make a game like this.
But the end result was just a lot of love,
a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
You know, it's probably 10 years of development,
crammed into two and a half years, you know,
but kind of how games go.
Shouldn't have made it the way we made it.
Yeah, yeah.
We did everything wrong, and the game came out great.
Now, is there an erase button?
There is, actually, yes.
If you go over to the eraser with the...
Oh, there's an eraser.
There we go.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Fun part about this right here.
I really enjoyed this part.
I played last night to get ready for this.
I had a blast doing this one.
Really messed up?
Embraced it, Roadway.
Yeah, you just got to ride with it.
We make you live with your decision here.
Yes.
Yeah, we do some fun stuff with this.
It was an idea we had early on.
You are the bounty hunter, so we never really want to put a face to that.
And in the first game, we let you choose through kind of a drug
trip where you're like, yes, I kind of look like this?
Right.
And in this case, we decided, what if we just let people draw what they look like?
I love this.
Some fun ways to make that funny.
We wanted to top the first, because there was a joke with the character creator the first time.
Yeah.
This is a huge step up, I feel.
I mean, I feel like this is the game for me.
Oh, yeah.
This is where I would spend 20 hours on this screen.
Yeah, I would be here for a solid 10 to 15 hours to the point where it would drive Mike and
Andy nuts.
I'm loving this.
Yes.
Yes, there is a.
theater in the game.
Oh, we're going to talk about that for sure is right.
Oh, yeah.
A quick one for everybody before we jump fully into this.
This is your kind of funny games cast plays for Wednesday, February 11th.
Of course, if you're watching live in the audience on Twitch and on YouTube, get those questions in via.
I'm not an artist for more.
Any of the guys are watching.
Of course, thank you to our Patreon producers.
Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Somme.
Wait, somebody get Andy.
Andy.
Andy.
Now, this is giving me Tim Schaefer,
kiln vibes where you get to make your own pottery.
I love, I'm here at the front of it.
I get to create who I am, which I really enjoy.
Yeah.
There's other fun moments with drawing in the game, too, that, you know,
there might have been one of you saw, like,
in a demo we did for IGN at one point,
one of the characters asked you to draw them.
There's an eraser to me.
He's like telling you, you know, draw me like a secret agent
or do this or do that.
It's really fun.
It's almost like the Titanic scene, which we...
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's- Oh no, there's an eraser button if you have to get you to.
There's a, uh, with the controller, it's almost a joke in itself.
How hard it is to draw is.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, can I curse on the box of crowns on the right?
You're like, selected the different.
Yes, you can curse.
Okay.
Sorry, sorry.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's, it's like a comma for me usually.
So you see, you can see what you're selected on the, in the box.
There you go.
I thought he was fuck with us.
Yeah.
I thought like, what do you do you want?
I thought he was like a child's drawing of a wall.
Just choose.
One more.
left.
There it is.
The TV's far away.
There you go.
Yeah, there's a glare too.
And I tell you.
My favorite part
is that when people do this,
they're not paying attention to like Godzilla
in the background.
Like destroying the city.
You made sure to frame them there.
Yeah, it's really funny.
There's a lot going on at the start of this game.
You're hit with this to chill.
Yeah.
Let's talk about that.
Let's set up high on life two.
What is he?
High on Life 2.
The sequel to High on Life 1.
What are we doing now?
So in the first game,
you're a high school kid who finds out that humans are going to be used as a drug by aliens
and you team up with some talking alien guns to try to take down an evil drug cartel.
In this game, you've already saved the human race once,
and you're about to find out that someone else is trying to turn humans into drugs again,
but they're doing it legally this time.
There's a pharmaceutical company that's doing it all by the books,
turning humans into pills.
And so you are going to have to switch sides and become an outlaw to fight the good guys,
essentially and save humanity once more.
But yeah, it's going to be very similar formula-wise
where you're going to be hunting down important officers
of this pharmaceutical company,
and there's going to be different bosses.
You'll find each one's a brand-new world
with a brand-new character and a brand-new gun
you're going to find to pair up with.
It's a bigger game.
It's a crazier game.
How do you make a bigger and crazier game?
And you said two and a half years it took to make this?
Accidentally.
What does that mean?
We aimed for two, but yeah.
What did you tell the investors?
That's us. You're looking at them.
Yeah, we're indie.
I think for us, we kind of knew what we had done with the first game and what we wanted to push it for it.
So in the first game, you know, we have X guns.
We have four guns, five guns in the first game.
We wanted to add more, try more ambitious stuff.
Like in this one, there's a dual-wielding married couple pair of guns.
And that's something that, like, we had to figure out how do we write for that?
How do we make it work gameplay-wise?
The character has to also be able to stab with Knifee in their hand.
Like there's all these different accommodations that we had to work out, but we wanted to go bigger and better.
And like in the first game, too, we revisited a few locations from time to time.
That's just an economical way to make a game.
But in this game, really, every level is a brand new location and a brand new idea.
So when I'm looking at it as a whole, I'm going, there's not a single hour of this game that feels like the previous hour.
There's so much happening and so much changing as you play.
I got so many questions.
Please.
I mentioned before the stream, I went to Pax West, got to play this game a little bit,
I had an Xbox event, and I was pleasantly surprised.
I really, really enjoyed High on Life 1.
But even when you guys announced High in Life 2, I was like, oh, that's surprised.
I, for some reason, didn't expect a high on Life 2, right?
And from playing the Xbox demo, I was very pleasantly surprised to see exactly what you were talking about.
Moments' Moment felt fresh.
Like, the amount of bits that you guys were just throwing at us, right?
like you're starting at ParkCon, remember those in the racer,
you start starting at ParkCon, right,
where you're trying to park the car,
people keep stealing your spot,
and then you go to the, I think MurderCon was another one.
Yeah, even in that level, like,
we started with the idea of it's a planet full of different conventions
and then we can, you know, come up with each of the different conventions
you'll pass through, and each of those feels different than the, like,
I don't know, there's a lot of variety.
We didn't make the game the way you're supposed to,
which is make one kit and use it as much as possible
and then run it into the ground.
We're like, well, this needs to be a murder-themed
convention. This needs to be a parking lot. This needs to be a political convention. And they all have to
look very different. Yeah. So are all those ideas what drive you toward making Holland Life to you?
Yeah. We're trying to make ourselves laugh. We're trying to do every idea that we can think of,
which like I just said, you kind of need to limit yourself sometimes. We're not good at that.
But what we are good at is saying we'll do this crazy thing and then panicking and then actually
figuring out a way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're very much,
like a yes and studio so if someone has a good idea it's like we might not be planning for that but
it's such a good idea we're just gonna do it anyway that was handy that looks fantastic that's like
a junior art director yeah that's really nice coffee and he's on it but yeah we just like we kind
of keep accidentally adding because everybody at studio is really creative and um we're like okay we'll
just figure out a way to make that happen and then it shows in the game you know like right now you're
sitting in this chair but when you walked out he asked you to sit and if you look at the audience
there's some empty seats out there you could have gone over there and sat in the audience and there's
some stuff there there's like always little little things that we've added in there and and
there's tons of unique dialogue and it's it's really stupid how we designed the game but the end
result is just yeah we were just talking like some of the choices you make in the game aren't
exactly clear like you don't even realize that you're doing something different than a different
player. There's a part coming up in this opening mission where there's a security guard and
there's like 12 different ways to get past him. And even people on our team didn't know some of
the routes you could take. And we don't really present it in a way that if you're playing through,
you realize you picked one of 12 choices, which is maybe a bad move because then it makes our,
the player doesn't know how impressive of a game we just made. So you guys put a bunch of stuff
the game that people may or may not know. Yeah, exactly. My personal goal is like to give the game
longevity where you know somebody who doesn't have the money to play it right now you know maybe it's
on sale they play later they find something nobody's found so far and then people start talking about
the game again and so there's just a lot in there that that people can poke around and find you know like
in a open world game there's lots of little side quests stuff like that and we do have that as well
but in our game pretty much every character has its own little side things you can do with it so like
every every little interaction is almost like an open world in itself
Even if it's constrained it was going, we still try to live by that philosophy.
And I think it shows.
When you're playing, you have one of six or seven guns equipped,
and we have lines of dialogue for each of the guns.
And in a play-through, you're only ever going to hear one of those seven lines each time,
depending on which gun you have out.
So we're writing seven times the size of the game that you're playing.
Damn.
And, you know, like a big part of our philosophy is,
I think we really like in a video game when we stumble onto something
that we can't believe they hid
and that we found it
and it feels so special
and they're like,
they were okay with me
not finding this,
that's so many things in our game
we don't really care if you miss it
because we want it to feel like something
you can't believe we put the effort in to include.
Yeah, you guys are known for that.
Of course,
we saw the big shout out earlier,
the theater, right?
Full on movies and high on Life One
that you could totally skip,
you can watch for five minutes,
you could watch the whole extended cut.
I mean, you guys are known for that.
Are we seeing more movies in this?
So this time we have a multiplex right in the city hub that shows multiple movies.
So you can go into a movie, start watching it.
You're like, yeah, maybe this one's not for me.
Come out, go to another theater, watch a different movie.
And throughout each little story arc and act in the game, you're unlocking a different movie that you can watch.
And we got the Red Letter Media guys back to do some commentary over Spookies, which is a really horrible, amazing movie.
and you can sit in there and just
they comment through the whole entire movie
it's awesome and we have TVs
more animated sketches
we outsource and work with a lot of really cool animators
to include as many
crazy things as you can imagine on the TVs
in the game
you can just sit and watch
I don't know like whenever I play a game that has a TV
I'm always like come on put some effort
and make this like a real believable TV station
and I think we do a decent job
actually making it feel like
space TV.
Yep, and there's sort of a central
home base you're returning to all the time, and
our biz dev guy found a way for us to just buy a bunch of old
commercials from, like, the 80s and 90s.
Awesome. And so there's an area in your kind of personal
bedroom where there's like an old TV and a bunch of VHS tapes
and you can just sit there and watch, like, terrible old commercials
that are so funny to watch. Do you have a Mr. Bucket's commercial
in there?
Oh, I don't know. We have the chicken one. There's like a chicken
one, like the clucking chicken.
I can't remember the name of it, but it was on when I was a kid all the time.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, the Mr. Bucket's one, that always had such a weird.
We played Mr. Bucket's one time at the old studio.
It got us the worst copyright strike.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Amazing.
In the 13 years of running this company.
That's awesome.
Mr. Bucket came out of hard.
We have a mission for ours.
Good, good.
Make sure you guys have those rights.
In addition to TV shows and commercials, we also have video games, like smaller video games.
Yes.
That's amazing.
Now, any way did you guys stop?
And was there someone in your studio that was like a Tim Geddes who was like, you guys don't need to be doing all of this?
Oh, yeah.
The games are already in.
Our producers.
You might be.
Yeah.
No, no, I'm the worst.
I'm always like, we can find a way to make it happen.
And the problem is we always do, which is like, we're, technically we're doing it wrong.
We're doing differently than other people do and it's really taxing.
But the end result is also different?
So it's like, is it wrong?
You know, it's like, it's art.
Yeah.
We're just making, yeah.
I don't know.
We have so many people.
on the team that get really excited about small ideas and we might be like, you know, we're probably
not going to do this. We're probably going to cut that. And then I'll find out a week later
that someone on the team was like, you know what, I found some extra time. I was going to do it.
I was really excited about this and I went ahead and worked up a prototype and we're like,
that's amazing. It's it. I love it. So people are just constantly helping us get a little
past the line that we thought we'd be able to hit. I want to highlight a feature because 2026,
it's all about live streaming now, live streaming right now. You guys do have a live streamer function.
What does that look like with all this content that you've added, all the weird wacky things?
When you do go streamer mode, you're protecting the streamer out there, helping them get their vods out and make money and have fun.
But like, what is taken out of that situation?
Also, do I need to turn that on right now?
I just realize I don't have that on.
Oh, yeah.
I don't know if we.
I'm trying to think if you run into it.
I don't know how deep you're going to get this.
Is it going to be dong?
It's for the movies, probably.
You'll be okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, what do you lose out on when you do street?
I think it's just the movie.
It's like copyrighted stuff that would get like a DMCA strike on a streamer.
Okay.
There may be other features.
I'm not really involved with the, with that feature in particular.
Yeah, I mean, it looks like we're getting close.
We're getting close to some sort of, uh, don't.
Some dong.
This is fine.
You're allowed to show this.
When you go on a murder quest, this is my favorite part.
Yeah.
Yeah, so this whole intro, which we weren't planning to show it, but cool.
I'm glad we're showing it.
But there's not much stage.
in this, which is fine, but if you guys have seen
other videos of the game, there's lots of skating.
But this one is the way we're kind of
telling the story
from in between the first game and this game
what you've been up to. And so here
we're trying to show you're kind of like, at the height
of your fame, you're bored, like, killing
is boring, you know, you're just kind of killing
everybody. And we really wanted
to push like, you made it, you did it.
You're successful and now what?
You know, and that's sort of how we wanted to kick
the beginning of the game.
Starting from that malaise of, well, are you doing anything
good anymore? Are you just coasting?
Yeah, yeah.
Which I guess kind of mirrors the development where it's like we didn't want to coast,
we wanted to keep going.
Yes, yes. And we expect always like new players or players that don't remember everything
from the first game. And so we have an idea that you'll see that allows people to kind
refresh the...
Which again, you can just walk past too.
A big part of our philosophy is it's opt-in.
So like, you know, if you don't...
Something's not hitting for you, whether it's a joke or just like a big beat of
story, usually there's a way for you to just go past it.
There are story beats that you can't get.
So you guys, not only did you guys write seven times what you needed to.
Yes.
You also could just skip stuff.
Yeah, we're psychotic.
Yeah.
But that's kind of the fun, though, is, I think it's more meaningful of everything is optional
because what you choose to engage with in the game is going to feel a little more special.
That's fair.
Yeah.
That's proof positive that you know what you got.
You got confidence in your product.
We write too much.
The script is like 10,000 pages, I think.
Jeez.
Alex is a workhorse and figures all that stuff out.
I don't know how.
We have a great writing team.
Yeah, and we've got some amazing writers.
It's a lot of work.
This is the same house from High on Life One.
It is.
There you go.
You recognize it.
Oh, yeah.
But it's a very kind of depressing, liminal version of it.
Yeah.
Which is new.
Yeah.
The goal is like, you know, you're in this weird depressed state.
I don't know how.
I mean, I imagine those people have hit depressed state in their life.
And the goal here is to kind of emulate that.
I had to put.
TikTok down.
Yeah.
TikTok.
It's hard being in this world right now.
It's really easy to just fall into the trap of like everyone is doing better than me and
now I'm depressed, right?
So, you know, I think that this shows the success that you get doesn't necessarily
mean you're happy.
The bounty hunter is bored and feeling a little listless.
You talk about writing, you had some big time voice actors.
Oh, my God.
In the first one, right?
J.B. Smooth.
Tim Robbins.
Tim Robinson, yeah.
Shout out to Betsy.
Betsy's one of my favorite.
She is our star.
Like Betsy Sedaro, one of the funniest people around.
She is our, I think her and J.B.
are kind of like the Lynchpin and Tim Robinson.
Like those are the three that we can lean on.
Michael Cusack as well.
Dave Herman is Gene.
Like we have people who are the core cast that have been with us
since the first game that are just incredible at what they do.
Betsy's so funny.
And they get to improvise a bunch too.
We give them, you know, we give them their lines.
I direct all the actors in the booth
and they get to a rhythm
we kind of know like here's what the line needs to be
but if you have some spice you want to throw in it
like go nuts
what's it like getting a new person on board
and saying yeah you're gonna play a psychotic gun
that's what I need for me right now
some people really need to understand
what the game is before they can get in
other people don't want to hear anything
like I don't care I'll just read the lines let's go
yeah yeah but we added a bunch of great new people
Ken Marino is one of my favorite new characters
in this if you've ever seen
Wet Hot American
in summer.
He's so funny.
He plays one of our new guns, Travis.
Oh, I love.
You got it.
You love him.
That's a good role.
He is maybe the most, I don't know,
most exciting new character for me.
And then we have Ralph Inson,
who's one of the other big new guns.
He's got the deepest, most serious British voice.
Was he a Lord that we got?
Galactus?
Yeah.
Yes.
Wow.
That guy has one of the best voices.
Yeah.
He's one where, yeah, the character's very deadpan.
And he's playing like your sort of no-nonsense hitman type who gets turned into a gun.
He's great to work with.
He delivered everything exactly as we put it on the page.
He knew what he was doing.
Yeah, he's a pro.
It was very clear he's a pro.
Yeah.
He's a pro.
He's a fresh.
He's so funny.
He's to work with Frankie, Gaborges Siddebae, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, he's so funny.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
I've worked him a couple times because he started here as a stand-up.
Oh, for real, yeah, yeah.
He's a few times.
He's very, very funny.
He's probably the most fun gun to use in the game.
I don't doubt it.
And his personality is really funny.
It's different than the other.
Yeah, like, I think this time around, too, we really kind of figured out the archetypes
that we wanted to sort of build the guns personalities around
and then had this huge list of talent we wanted to work with.
And it took a second, but there were a lot of people we'd worked with before
that we wanted to give bigger roles to.
and there were people that we were just dying to work with in the first place.
Joe Perra has a part in the game if you've ever seen Joe Perra talks with you.
Very, very funny comedian who we were excited to include.
I'm a visual man.
Yeah, he's a visual man.
It would click as soon as you saw.
He's this like soft-spoken sort of Midwest guy.
Yep, okay.
But yeah, Tim Robinson, one of the funniest guys in the planet too, still with us for this game.
Wow, that's awesome.
That's great.
Yeah, yeah.
What's it like calling up J.B. Smooth?
saying we're back.
Awesome.
He's always going.
We're also working with J.B.
to get a show going.
So we've had some meetings sitting
in a writer's room.
Maybe he'll be going to work out a TV pit.
Now that this is done, hopefully we'll start
to put a little more effort into that
and get some traction because we've just
been so heads done on this.
Yeah.
But yeah, J.B.'s very involved.
He's amazing.
Such a nice guy.
He loves the game
and he's one of those guys
His energy is really high
So if we're in the booth
He'll just keep me
Energizes for the whole four hour session
Does J.B. stick to the script?
Sometimes.
You can, yeah.
We've developed a rapport.
He knows when to go off book.
Okay, good.
Yeah, I think Alick will usually have
somebody like
Do the line as written
And then afterwards
If it's someone that we like
When they add lib or do it
A little.
I let them know
There's there's periods
where you can go freestyle mode, there's periods when it needs to be exactly as written
or the joke's not going to make sense.
And they know how to do it.
They're four hours.
There's such long sessions or marathons.
There's so much dialogue in this game.
Like, I think I was in the booth, you know, for eight hours a day for four months straight.
It's crazy.
Is it Alec?
Which one's cutting out, guys?
Someone's cutting out.
Oh, me?
Kevin?
I'm not hearing that.
Oh, yeah.
Chad is saying.
Chad's saying one of them is cutting out right there to either Alec or Mikey.
Yeah, give us a refresh.
We'll keep talking to it.
Yeah, you let us know.
So we got new voices, new guns.
We kind of glossed over the skating.
You brought up skating.
And then you kind of, you kept going.
We should probably rewind because skating is huge in this game.
Yeah.
Replaced our sprint button.
I mean, it started as sort of a little experiment where we were just like,
how would a skateboard work in a first-person shooter?
Would it be fun?
Does it make sense?
The answer was like immediately yes.
We had these blockout levels with no art, with no really anything in them.
And it was already so much fun just to ride around in this early prototype skateboard mechanic.
And so we ended up shifting a lot of focus and building the game around it.
The stories centered a little bit more around it.
It is, it's just nice.
I don't know.
I can like zone out and just ride the skateboard without doing any actual content in the game,
just using our Hubworld as.
like a skate park and it that keeps me occupied for hours.
I think you've done a really good job at identifying.
Yeah, it has to be like the hub world has to be able to be skatable and like the areas
that you're in because there is, yeah, it's my sprint button, but there's a grinding
feature that's like, I'm going to be grinding and I'm going to be jumping from ledge to ledge to
grind on it and make this all happen.
There's a whole thing called Tony Park or Tony Hawkitecture.
Yeah.
It's basically just people identifying stuff in the real world that looks like you could
skate on it in a Tony Hawk game.
and our whole world is morphed around that.
Like this hub world is a skate park.
Yeah, I was playing the other day,
and there was an NPC that I hadn't come across yet talking about,
like, why is the city like this?
Like, why are there ramps?
What is this?
What's going on?
And I thought that was so funny.
Yeah, I honestly forgot to,
and then I just randomly came across them
and thought it was hilarious.
But yeah, so the skateboarding,
we started out as like just a power-up
that we were going to have in the game,
and it would just be like,
oh, I found a skateboard,
or get it from a vending machine,
and just one-time use kind of thing.
And our early prototype of it, we were like, man, there's so much potential here.
This is really fun.
And so our other creative director, Eric Meyer, worked with one of our programmers to really hone the controls,
to get it to where it just felt seamless.
And it was really hard.
There's a reason there's not a lot of skateboarding in first-person shooters.
It was a tough challenge.
I feel like we're the first.
I thought you guys might be the first people would do this.
Yeah, but we put a lot into it.
And I think even just right away, it kind of clicks.
But once you get used to it, even if it doesn't click right away, it's just, it's so seamless.
And it's integrated into combat.
It's integrated into traversal.
It's everywhere.
How far in do we need to play?
You'll see it.
Yeah, you'll see one.
Now I'm very curious.
We will 100% finish with him skating around for sure.
Yeah.
If you keep going, that's the guy right there, reptical.
We're going to fight him in a little bit.
Yeah.
If you go to the left, this is kind of a funny little.
Easter egg for people who follow
YouTubers. There's a YouTuber named
cartoons. Oh, yeah. And he's a friend
of mine, and he really wanted to be an
NPC in the game, so the character on the left
is actually cartoons.
Oh, that's cool. He did a great job. Yeah, and
it's not like, you know, product placement.
He's genuinely like a friend of mine. My wife
is an interior designer and designed
his house, and so we just like
him and my wife and his wife
set up like a play date, and then we just
like, and so I made it a point to
to get him in the game somewhere.
He's actually a couple characters throughout.
So if you're a fan of cartoons,
you'll find him in here.
But yeah, we've got a lot of little secret actors
and stories and stuff all throughout the game.
Yeah, there's a lot.
It's too much.
We're going to talk about more of all the secrets,
all the fun, and all the new editions in this game.
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And welcome back, everyone.
Of course, we are here with your games cast plays for the week.
Check it out high on life two with the team from Squant's games.
Of course, I got Mikey and I have my main man.
How did I forget it?
Alec.
Alec.
Now I feel bad that you called me your main man.
Yeah, I was like either he really likes me or you forgot my man.
Well, Mike and I are going to get tattoos, but you are going to come with it.
Alex said he'll get one.
We'll get him in there.
Alex said he'll get one.
Write it down.
Guys, we've been talking about the skateboards, the new guns.
We've been talking about all the new content.
What am I missing here?
What else is something fun you want to talk about here for Highland Life, too?
Let's see.
We got a bunch of fun bosses.
There's a part in the game that goes nuts.
Well, there's a few big narrative swings we took where, without spoiling too much,
there is a full murder mystery in the game.
Nice.
And again, you can just skip this.
If you don't want to solve the murder mystery,
you got to solve the mystery.
We let you just guess or give up,
but it is a real, actual mystery that you could investigate
and listen to all the testimonies and look for clues
and try to piece together.
We played a lot of Phoenix Wright in Case of the Golden Idol
and Oprah Dinn to prep for it.
You're speaking my language.
Completely unnecessary.
I cannot believe we did it or pulled it off.
And it took a lot of iteration because at first,
you know, you're trying to design a mystery,
And I've personally never done that before.
So I didn't know how hard to make it.
And it turns out you can make a mystery way too hard.
Yeah, yeah.
So early versions.
Some mysteries go unsolved.
We were a little worried for a second.
But no, it's in there.
And it's like one of a few very big swing narrative moments where we kind of break our genre
apart a little bit and let you do something completely different.
There's another one near the end of the game that I won't spoil that I also can't believe we did.
Oh, I know.
I love that.
Yeah, that one was like a joke we talked about where we were like, wouldn't it be stupid if we did this thing?
That was part of the first meeting we never had.
And then we didn't think it was actually like going to be fun.
And then it ended up being really fun.
There's a lot of stuff.
We had a meeting.
I wish I could say what it was, but it's so, I don't want to score.
No, you'll see.
It's near the end of the game.
You fight a dragon, a big dragon.
Spider-Man shows out.
Yeah, yeah.
There's amazing.
There we go.
We did it.
How much bigger is this game compared to the first one?
So the goal was to be about 25% bigger, but I think it's about three to four times as big.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
Again, just...
The Hubworld alone is...
Yeah, just like accidental, like, just adding and adding.
You know, a lot of people who don't make games don't know that a lot of the games comes together, like, at the end.
You know, the last six months, four months, you really start to see all the hard work pay off.
And that's when we started to realize, like, is this game like 30, 40 hours?
And it ended up being about, I mean, I think like most people will probably be spending 30 or 40 hours.
Wow.
Yeah.
You could speed run.
We've got to test her that speed runs the campaign.
And speed running it is about the length of the first game in total.
So it's a big step up.
And that surprised us as much as it's going to surprise fans.
What's crazy is for how much longer it is you're also going to so many more places.
Like the way we did the first game is,
smart we we had a few locations designed and we cleverly brought you back to them a couple times so we're
reusing assets in a in a way that is uh you know economical sure more and for this game most levels
are in a completely new spot you're not going to be i mean you're going to go back to the hub a bunch
you're going to revisit a few areas but like every level is its own brand new thing so for
this already longer game you're going to be doing different things throughout how how much bigger is
the or not bigger but how what is the size of the team working on this game on an eight
Yeah, we're around 80 people now.
We started really small.
The first game we made Trover was like a handful of people and then most of high on life
one was developed maybe like, I think it was like 12 people and then the last maybe six
months we brought on a bunch more people.
So you know we had those growing pains finishing up high on life one and then after that
we just kept growing but after high on life one we were able to bring in people that had a lot
more experience that played the game and they were like, I can bring something new to this.
A lot of AAA devs that know how to make games.
We have a much less indie execution than we had on the first game, but we're still very indie.
It just doesn't show at a glance.
I think we let our team do a lot of things that you might not be able to do in the developer.
That's true.
That gets people excited.
Like I said before, like designers and artists are constantly hopping stuff into the game
that we thought we wouldn't have time for
just because it was something
they were excited about.
And that's the kind of environment
where it lets the game grow to this size.
Well, that's a question for you guys.
How do you keep perspective on like the humor then
over the span of two and a half years?
Yeah.
Because I mean, a joke is only funny so many times.
It's very hard.
I am very picky.
But also, like you said, it's a long game.
I said 10,000 pages of scripts,
of global lines of stuff that the player might never hear.
So you do have to kind of just like
sometimes service the story
before anything else.
And if it's not the funniest thing in the world, that's fine.
We're honoring the characters.
We're honoring the story.
That being said, I think we really click into this tone and style of humor where we're
kind of being a little rascally, we're hostile to the player a little bit.
We're pranking you a bunch.
If it makes me laugh, if it makes one of our writers laugh or someone on our team, it's just
in.
It's usually going to stay in.
We have to trust our gut.
But I think if you treat it like a toy or a prank, like everything in a game,
that's supposed to make you laugh is something that's going to surprise you.
So if we do something that the player didn't expect or we just trick them,
that's usually a pretty easy laugh.
I think that's something we can fall back on all the time.
But then there's also just character humor.
Like we know who the characters in the game are, who the actors are, we write to their strengths.
Like writing for Tim Robinson is a very specific thing.
I know how to write for him and he's going to take all those lines and make them the funniest thing in the world.
It's very different from writing for Ken Marino, who's playing much more selfish, pathetic,
guy, Travis in the game, or like J.B. Smooth, who's just like a mile a minute fast talker who's
just sort of very personable and friendly. So part of it is even if you're not...
To the left, less. Yeah, even if you're not laughing, you are enjoying your time with some of
these characters. And you can pick between all the different guns. If you want to spend some time
with J.B. Smooth as Gus, like, you can do that. And now you're just going to be hanging out
with a guy you like. That's part of it, too. Like, half the battle is just making sure.
that you are in good company.
We're on the display of weapon abilities.
Yes.
You have new weapons.
Oh, yeah.
What kind of fun abilities did you get to play with this time, right?
So we've got dual pistols, and Alec was touching on this earlier.
They're a married couple, but they're going through a divorce, and they're currently in a
separation, and you're kind of like filling in that gap while they're in this separation.
and their storyline is really funny.
Those guns are really fun because we let you just pull as fast as you can.
So when you have both guns and you see an enemy, it just feels insane.
You're just like, oh, fuck, and it feels really good.
I think that people are going to have a good time with them, and they're, like, quipping
and their relationship changes throughout the game.
It's really fun.
In terms of they're the same sort of subspecies as Kenny was in the first game,
so they have similar abilities, but the dual aspect of the game.
them is what sort of elevates them to something new.
And then we have sheath, which some people have probably saw in our gamescom demo, the one
we were talking about earlier.
He's played by Ralph Einson, and he has some really cool moves.
Like you can, he has these stakes that he fires out and you can fire them into enemies, but once
you hit one, you can hit another and another and you kind of build this kebab.
And you can choose to just fling them off a cliff or something, or you can shoot this
little balloon on them to kind of pop them like a fair state fair game kind of thing
um and then we've got bowie yeah soul hole yeah boi's soul hole is really fun
and you can like rip open a portal and then shoot through the portal and uh it's really cool yeah his portal
lets you see like souls in the world so like enemies will have their little soul flying around weak spot
kind of thing um but there's also puzzles involved in using the soul hole and uh it it's another just
like why did we do it but it's really cool
It's just like, O'ie is so fun to use.
He also has, like, one of those, like, translucent sticky hands, you know, from, I don't know.
I don't know, you know, from when us old people work.
Oh, yeah.
You still make those.
Yeah, but he has one of those, and so there's some stuff he can do with that.
And he can also, that's what he uses to kind of, like, tear the world open for you to look through.
But since he's two-handed, his little sticky hand holds knify, so you get, like, a cool animation when you're using him.
And I'm sorry, put the sticky hand on my pocket.
doesn't lose all the stick because it has my pocket.
Yeah, yeah, just like lint.
Just limp all over it.
Denim colored pocket.
That would have been so fun to have him like lick it off or something.
You know, like that would have been a really fun.
How many times you had your mom silly puttty and just said, here you go mom,
you got to put it in your pocket?
Yeah, there's just like fingernails and shit in there.
Yeah.
It's disgusting.
But then there's another, there's another gun that I'm probably most excited about that we are not going to talk about.
That I think is really cool.
It really adds a layer.
to everything and I think it's I think people are really gonna like it I feel like
we're missing some but there's a lot of stuff and we also have like yeah we'll miss a
million things in this this is one of my favorite character this is this one of
this is uh this is uh this is uh this is uh this is uh yeah if you saw weapons yeah he was the dad
and weapons well one of the dad there's many times you know i actually loved him in this show
called stone quackers it was this cartoon and I just always loved his the quality of
his voice and uh it worked out that we got him
And he crushed it.
He did a great job as his character.
He's just kind of like a nice guy that's a good bounty hunter,
but is also just a pot head, you know?
I don't know what he would call it.
But he's just like perpetually alive.
And now he's dead.
And now he's gone.
And now his head is blown off.
Yeah, I love the character design.
I'm a big fan of the lizard and chameleon,
but like the tail with the sword on the other.
Yeah, so sick.
That like water gun-esque see-through gun is so cool.
Yeah, he rocks.
The only bad.
Yeah, the only dad in weapons.
The dad, the one dad, that's cool.
That's the one.
The dad, the dad who's stabbing his face.
Yes.
Yes.
There we go.
Yeah, now you can skate.
So this is...
Love this thing.
One of my favorite bits in the game is about to come up, which is, uh, Gene is pulling up a tutorial to teach you how to skateboard.
Uh, he finds this on online.
This was good.
This was really funny.
Yeah.
It's so long, too.
You can just sit.
Yeah, yeah.
I kept skating and he kept going.
And so this is my buddy John Milstein in a costume.
There's a live action.
We came up with this idea to film a live-action skateboard tutorial where he's telling you the controls.
And I just called him up.
I'm like, hey, he's a real skater.
I'm like, hey, do you want to just go to a parking lot and put on a costume and film this real quick?
Oh, see, but he's actually working the costume?
Yeah, so we shot it in like a couple hours, and then by the end of the day, it was implemented in the game.
That's how quickly we work sometimes.
Oh, this is cool.
So very silly.
You can skip this if you wanted to, too.
So it's like one of those other things.
Why do we let them skip it?
by it.
And this is a perfect example of the, like, the way our ideas grow because in this, he mentions
his dad, Barney Sizzler, and Barney Sizzler is one of our writers, Julian, who's hilarious.
Julian just like a photo of Julian.
That's been Walter.
Yeah.
And then we loved it so much.
We turned it into unlockable deck you can get in the game and it's like a memorial on the deck.
And like, this character's lore just keeps building in the game.
It just keeps like going, you know, because someone will get attached to something.
and then you're like, this is really funny, I don't want to lose this.
And then that's how you end up with 40 hours of complex gameplay, you know?
There's Barney Sizzler.
Yeah, there's Barnett.
So that's one of our writers, Julian.
That's just him with an old filter.
Yeah, that's just him with an old filter.
He's so funny.
He's a great writer.
Shout out to Julian.
Yeah.
So good.
And there's just the name, Barney Sizzler.
When I did the deck, I found, like, one of those old, like, memorial shirts that people
wear sometimes, like, an airbrush.
So I tried to kind of match that vibe on the skate deck.
You might get to...
Oh, no, you probably won't get to it today, but...
It's in the, like, tropical harbor area of the hub.
Coming up with names for dumb characters,
and this game is my favorite thing to do.
Yeah.
When you watch some of the newscasts, wait till the end to hear what his name is.
Yeah, I don't know why Barney Sizzler is a funny name either, but it's fantastic.
It's funny.
It's good.
Especially with the picture of, like...
Yeah, it's incredible.
But, yeah, so Reptical is still.
alive because his species
can regrow their limbs and
they can regrow their head even and so
it was probably hard
maybe on the stream it was clear but his head
grows back in that one little
cut scene there and now you can fight him. Perfect yeah
I was kind of wondering about that yeah
I was like did I just trip out did we just kill this guy?
Yeah yeah so yeah he
he goes through a whole
bit about all the different things
he can regrow and it's great
I mean I'm sure your brain
immediately jump
you've already saw
Hello.
Yeah, you figured it out right away.
Yeah, it's always a balance for us of, like, juvenile humor.
Like, how far can we push it without being, like, the juvenile humor game?
And so we, Alex does a good job of, like, finding a balance of, like, we could throw in, like, a dick joke here.
Yeah, there's some cerebral shit, and then there's also dick jokes.
Yeah, we try to keep, like, kind of mix it up.
There's, like, I guess I'll spoil it.
There's a joke in quarters in this little secret base you go to.
where we have a crane machine,
like an old claw machine,
but it's a Frazier crane machine.
Just get Frazier plushies from that.
Yeah, and it's such a dumb joke,
but it just clicks.
One of my favorite jokes in the games.
Yeah, and I think one of our designers was like,
we should have a Frazier crane machine,
and we were like, we all rolled our eyes,
but then we were like, that's actually really fun.
I was like, you're a genius.
Let's do it.
All of, Alex loves puns.
That's like a thing that you'll find out.
It has to be a good pun.
You're not like in the show.
Frazier.
I already got it.
Okay.
Frazier, of course, let's take a step back.
Frazier, of course, a popular spinoff of Cheers.
Of course.
He was like to Frazier crane back of the day.
Well, in the last game, we had a whole Cheers parody, too.
We've had a Fraser reference in,
he's kind of become a...
In High on Life One, the DLCN.
He's like when they put, what's his name in all the Pixar movies.
Oh, John Ratsenberg?
Yeah.
He's our lucky charm.
And he has no idea.
I suspect he has no idea.
We always have John Daly coming.
Let me survive.
No one's reached out to Kelsey Grammer on this one.
I don't think so.
I don't want to work with Kelsey Graham.
We had a whole scene in our DLC where there's a restaurant that's a spoof on Cheers called Cheeks.
I don't know if you guys played the DLC, but there's like giant, there's a character
and he's sitting on top of this cave that is the old Cheers bar.
We did like a pretty faithful recreation of it.
And you can see his ass cheeks like kind of hanging down into the bar.
Cheeks is another pun.
See?
I know.
I know.
And that was one where I was like, I hope this works.
And then it worked.
Because I'm so anti-pun, and Alec loves puns.
You and friendly hate pun.
He gets me to laugh at his stupid puns.
I think if you know the pun is stupid, you're winking with them, then...
For sure, for sure.
See, that's where the subtle genius comes out.
So, wait, are you really a Frazier fan?
Oh, yeah.
We always find people that are, like, huge Frazier.
Frazier, I've watched all of Frazier, like, two to three times.
That's so funny.
Yeah, I'm with you.
That's great.
We recently hired, like, a merch guy.
I watched the Reberd also.
It was not good.
Yeah, he's like our merchandising director, and randomly, he's,
He's a huge Frazier fan, and we're like, we got Frazier stuff in the game, and he's just like, this is fucking great.
It was just one of those random shows that just hit.
It was so well-backed.
I got to go back and you watch it.
It's all because of the chemistry that they, it's all chemistry.
Niles is perfect.
Niles is perfect.
The song is perfect.
All the supporting castes.
Well, you can unlock little, little plushy pillows of each of them for your bed in the case.
I will definitely do that.
Pretty awesome.
But yeah, we tried really hard to like ground things.
by putting real places in the game too.
Like, I won't spoil some of them,
but like the first game,
we had Space Applebee's which...
Of course.
I'm sure there's...
There's some more new ones in that.
Yeah, and I think it's like
some of the stuff that's in here
to people who don't know,
it probably feels like a product placement thing
or something,
but really it's just ideas
that we thought were funny
and then sometimes, like,
the company will find out
and be into it,
and then it's like,
okay, this is actually kind of funny.
It's cool.
Like, we could partner with these people,
you know?
So I think people will find
a couple surprising things in the game.
And then there's also ones where we find out
they're not into it, and then it turns into something else.
There's one we had to steer ship on.
Yeah, there was one I loved that did that.
My heart broke.
Yeah, that we had to, we didn't get rid of it.
You'll recognize what it is when you play,
but it was, I wanted it, we all wanted it to be the real.
I don't know how much we're a lot of us.
I guess, let's just say it's a similar vibe to Applebee's.
Okay.
But it has a fun.
jungly theme to it.
Oh, okay.
That you've given it away.
Yeah.
To some people.
To some people.
It's a niche.
It's a niche restaurant.
I don't think we have one up here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that is not what it is.
It is not that.
But that is,
that was the seed of the idea.
Have you guys thought about reaching out to the Outback steak?
I would,
that's a very,
that's right in the zone.
Because you're always looking for something that would be funny that everyone
knows.
Like Outback to me is right in that sweet spot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Something that's kind of not,
not to insult.
outback, but something that's a little corny.
I mean, we can hook you guys up with the outback people,
not the corporate people, just the ones in
Daily City.
Yeah.
As long as they say it's okay.
Yeah, I feel like that
will be. Yeah, I feel like that holds up.
But yeah, no, it's
I see people in the chat guessing,
but it's not, I mean, it's not
a real place, so
no one's going to get it right. It's a made up
place just for the game.
I want to talk about the team.
indie dev, you brought up, you know, players coming to play
of the game when they're ready, when they can, when they can afford it.
Game Pass, round number two.
That's right.
Team back up with Microsoft and Xbox and also releasing on all the ecosystems
day one as well. It looks like besides Switch, we'll talk about in just a little bit,
but how does that feel with Game Pass again?
And, of course, being everywhere, day one.
So I love Game Pass and just the concept of like having a monthly fee to play a bunch of games
because I don't have time to play through every single game.
So for me personally, it's like I'll throw an hour in here, an hour in there and check it out.
I don't think if it was only Game Pass, it would be great in the long run, right?
Because, you know, you want to keep making games.
And a lot of times, like, with Game Pass, you're getting a lot of eyes on the game, which is great.
But then the sales aren't always lining up exactly, which is fine.
It's fine because that's just the nature of that.
So this time, we're able to be out on multiple platforms at the same time,
while also having a lot of people playing the game that might not have been able to afford a full-priced game,
they get to still play the game and talk about it with people on other platforms who don't have that same service.
And then you just get a lot of people talking.
That's like really the benefit of making this game is people just talking about it.
Sometimes you've just got to get your foot in the door because I don't know, like we could be a little polarizing,
so it's nice to have the option to just jump in and see if it's for you.
Yeah.
And I think that there's something in here for everybody.
And like, I have no problem if there's not.
Like, it's not everything is for everybody.
And, like, I think that's fine.
This game is going to hit for some people really hard and it's going to bounce off others.
That's how it goes.
Yeah, and I think that's great.
That's the sign of something that's interesting, right?
Like, you don't want to end up with something that's fine for everybody, right?
You kind of shave all the edges off.
Here's my character, pseudo.
Yes, this is Alec right here.
I like this character a lot.
Thank you.
So what's happening here, I'm not sure, again, how much this stream can hear,
but what's happening is you just killed bounty hunters as a bounty hunter,
which breaks the code.
And so the network is trying to lock your suit down,
and pseudo is fighting back,
trying to keep that from happening so that you can go rescue your sister.
So I'm sure the stream is figuring it all out to you.
But for us here, at least, like, that's what's going on.
There are some buck thunder nods in this game.
I won't spoil.
Yes, yes, there are a couple little buck thunder things.
It's treating me like a virus.
And then Switch 2.
Yes.
How's that coming along?
How has that been developing for that new platform right there for you guys?
I love the Switch, so I want our games on the Switch every time.
I'm excited.
It looks amazing.
I was surprised.
We're working with Turn Me Up Studios who do a lot of Switch ports.
But in this case, they've been with us the whole time, like keeping up with us.
So we'll do stuff.
They'll take it.
They'll optimize it, make it look good.
So they're just like right with us.
It's as if we're all part of the same team.
Oh, you're going to meet this.
So they care a lot about the quality of the port.
In a way, it's a port, but it's a port in the same way that, like, Steam is an Xbox.
Oops, my bet, are ports of each other, right?
Like, it's right there along with everything else.
That's great.
So I think it's a very valid and good version of the game.
It looks really good.
And the Switch 2 version of High on Life 1, if people haven't seen that, like, it looks great.
It looks really good.
And so we're just like building on that.
I mean, that was Unreal Engine 4.
This is 5.
And so there's, you get a lot more benefits visually.
The Switch 2 is powerful.
The game looks good on there.
Yeah, it's surprising.
It looks good.
I'm going to get it on there.
Yeah, yeah, it's cool.
Especially if you're playing on the small screen,
you're like, holy shit.
Like, it looks crazy on the small screen.
It hides like kind of all the, any like optimizations that got made.
Like if you're a handheld player, it looks crazy.
Oh, yeah.
How did you get him out?
Oh, you got them out.
Yeah.
You're about to meet a dev favorite character, one of our favorites.
Oh my God.
Okay, so here's a funny thing.
There's all this, you're going to the human exhibit at the zoo, which is kind of controversial.
That's what the protesters were protesting about in the beginning.
But you'll see all these little flags and stuff around with a guy on it.
That's the human in the exhibit.
His name is Griffin P. Spencer.
And so people probably assume he's an actor or someone on the team.
He's literally just like a random guy we found on a stock photo website.
and I'm dying to see if he ever finds out and like what his reaction is because
imagine how weird that would be to like you're playing a game and you're like is that
fucking me like what the hell's going on yeah yeah it's that's like that's dream
that extreme is to be a celebrity and it's something that he doesn't even know yeah we can
make it happen we'll figure out a way to me yeah I'll authorize Mike's likeness for you guys
yeah yeah you got it all we will figure it out I'm I'll try to make it as unflattering as
possible that's awesome Michael did
Griffin's over there to the left.
I love the human slander, by the way.
Oh, yeah.
This is like a museum where they don't understand humans very well.
But here's Griffin, voiced by Corey Lokeyak, very funny comedian.
Oh, you're a human under there.
Oh, I'm seeing it now.
He can pet him.
Yeah, and you can pet him.
You can pet him.
You can pet him a lot of dialogue if you mess with him.
Oh, yeah, I guess so.
But honestly, it's a chill, man.
They feed me like six times a day.
All sorts of nice people come by to pet me.
I just love this.
TSR for sure
I think FSR
Our tech director Nick would know
But I know at least TSR is in there
Yeah register can you pet the human
Yes
You can definitely pet the human
You can pet him too much
And some of your choices matter
And this one is one of them
Yes yes
Light spoilers
I mean that's kind of
The whole game
Like good luck for you know
We remember some of the dump
Yeah
Well, guys, as we come up to the top of the hour, of course,
high on life 2 dropping February 13th.
Not much time to wait right around the corner.
Friday the 13th, Halloween game.
Sick.
On Game Pass, also on other ecosystems.
PlayStation, PC, Xbox, all at launch, and then Switch 2 later on in April.
So keep an eye on for that if you're a Switch gamer.
Squatch games.
What have I missed, Mikey, Alex.
What have I missed, boys?
What do we need to tell the people?
Great question.
You got Richard Kind in this game?
I'm looking about that.
I'm just thinking of other cast members.
What else you got?
The wizard.
The what?
The what?
The whistle man.
The whistle man.
I don't know what you just said.
Yeah, we got some great people.
Fred Melamette.
Who else?
We got, oh, God, there's just so many.
Honestly, there's just like so many voice actors in here
and just people who aren't voice actors
who you might recognize some other stuff
that you're going to,
honestly I'm finding stuff still even though I you know I was involved every second of every day
there's a stand-up club you can go do stand-up in the game yeah the guns can deliver
that's another very weird narrative thing we fucked with I think of what I mean there's it's crazy
I god I wish I can't wait to talk about the game in like a month yeah I don't want to spoil
because there's so many cool things explore the hub there's so much to do in the hub that's
but oh one thing that you might have missed earlier
when you come out of the house and you're inside a bounty hunter museum that's dedicated to you
that's sort of the way we're trying to tell the story of what happened in the first game and so you get you can interact with each exhibit to kind of learn about like why did I kill this person what was the significance of this and so we're letting the player like remember what happened in the first game without having them sit through like a long cutscene or something that's more of an opt-in way to get the history one of our writers brian is in the chat reminding me that fred stoller is in the game thank you brine yes fred stoller yes oh
Oh, yeah. Okay, so Brian Weissall, one of our writers, I don't know if you guys have heard of Hot Streets or Royal Crackers.
There are fantastic cartoons if you haven't seen them, but go check him out after this if you haven't seen them.
But we brought him on board, and he's been doing some writing for us, and he's doing a lot of, yeah, the Dangerfields.
We posted one of his animations, dueling Dangerfields where Julian and I are doing competing Rodney Dangerfield impression.
Give me a little Rodney Dangerfield right now.
It's not.
boy I don't get no respect
part of the fun is that it's not a good impression
I say that was
that was something you just get it's very
it's very good
but yeah so Brian also is an artist and does
like he like will animate
these videos not he'll write them
he'll animate them he'll kind of
edit and take the whole thing from start to finish
and the end result is awesome it feels like
little cartoons in the game and
I'm really pumped that we got him on board
I see uh chat
coming in, is there more customization in the game?
You talked about the skate decks.
Is there any more customization that you can tease or share?
I will say there's lots of customization.
Yes, yes.
I'm trying to think, yes, there's quite a bit of customization in the game.
And with the skateboards, at least, you know, we can talk about that.
You can customize the trucks, the grip tape, the wheels.
You can kit out your board.
There's some little unexpected fun boards in there too and fun things to mix and match
Obviously we've shown some of the demos you can see where you're
There's different like themed bounty suits that you can wear
So and those are applicable at any time you can you know just wear your favorite one like in we've shown this already
So I can talk about it one of the suits you get is for them the murder mystery that Alec was talking about it's like a fancy suit
But we just based it on Prince's purple suit yeah, that he wears
That makes sense.
You get it from a character voiced by John Waters.
Yes, John Waters.
That's a great one.
Yeah, that's a great one.
Yeah, that's a great one.
We got John Waters.
I don't know how the fuck we did that.
Rules.
That was so cool.
Yeah.
I can't believe you said yes.
Thank you, John.
It's unbelievable.
And his delivery is so funny.
Like, it's so, I don't know that it's like trying to be funny, but it's just perfect.
He's being funny.
Yeah, he's killing it.
It just comes across so well.
Nick and Blessing any final questions with the guys here before we are wrap it up?
No, guys.
Yes, it is the guy.
Yes, Chief Cass in the chat says,
is this the guy Nick kissed?
Yes.
Yes.
Which you reminded me of when you walked in.
Yes.
That was fun.
Believe it or not,
I do kiss a lot of guys.
Well, that's a shame.
I felt special.
Well, you were the first.
Okay, good.
You were the first to kick it off.
So it was so good you had to do it again.
I mean, you know,
you got to come by the studio more and show off the game.
If I lived out here,
I come hang out all the time.
Boys is awesome.
Yeah, this is really cool.
Yeah.
This is really fun.
I can tell you guys put a lot of love and creativity
in this.
and I love anything that's creative and full of love.
Yeah, yeah.
Thanks so much for coming and show.
I really appreciate you guys letting us come talk about the game.
I know it was kind of hectic because we like to just say stupid stuff, but I appreciate it.
You like to say good stuff.
We appreciate you guys and the time that you gave us.
And most importantly, allowing us to show it off to the audience, February 13th, high on life on Game Pass.
Coming to all your favorite ecosystems and platforms, jump in, get or try, have some fun.
Let us know in the comments below.
If you'll be jumping in on Friday the 13th and some of the things you're going to be,
you're looking forward to on the big sequel for High on Life.
We'll catch you on the next games cast plays.
But until then, it's been our pleasure to serve you.
Goodbye.
