How High on Life Unexpectedly Stole Gamescom
A week after Gamescom kicked off with Opening Night Live on August 23, it’s pretty clear that the unexpected hit of the show on social media was High on Life from Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland’s Squanch Games. Set for release on December 13 for PC and Xbox, it’s a first-person shooter wrapped in the same kind of darkly-comedic weirdness seen in Roiland’s previous games like Trover Saves the Universe and Accounting. Squanch Games’ creative director Mikey Spano describes it as “Bladerunner if Jim Henson did it,” and compares the bounty hunting gameplay to Metroid Prime. Tonally, it’s an acquired taste, and honestly it wasn’t on our Gamescom bingo card of games we thought we’d be talking about right now.
A week after Gamescom, on IGN channels alone, content about High on Life has seen over 33.5 million video views, and a staggering 77.6 million impressions (“impressions” are a measure of how many people have seen posts about the game in their social feeds.) By comparison, Dune Awakening – the next most popular title we covered – saw just 8.6 million impressions.
High on Life wasn’t an exclusive or a world premiere at Gamescom. When Microsoft announced it at its Xbox and Bethesda Showcase back in June, it performed moderately well. In the two months since, the trailer has gradually accumulated 348 thousand views on our YouTube channel. It’s been on our radar, for sure, but it’s hardly been leading the charge when it comes to potential hits this year. If you had asked anyone “what’s going to be big in Q4?” no one would have said “High on Life.”
When new gameplay footage, featuring a very verbose boss fight, dropped during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live show last week, it did OK out of the gate, and after a week it has
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