Artwork of the Joke: How Excessive On Life 2 Turns ‘Humorous’ Into ‘Enjoyable to Play’

“Bible Adventures was the massive one we acquired – I feel that may have been the very first one we even tried to get. We’re huge followers of it right here – there’s a e-book by Gabe Durham that’s all in regards to the historical past of that recreation and its developer, Knowledge Tree, and the way they skirted the legislation to promote bootleg NES carts. It’s such a loopy story, and it’s an honor to characteristic the sport right here. I received’t spoil the opposite ones, however Bible Adventures does get featured massively within the recreation throughout [a boss fight]. I’m actually happy with that half – it took quite a lot of work and we did it simply because it made us snort and appeared like an insane factor to decide to.”

However alongside the jokes that include big quantities of planning, there are additionally ones that sprung up by likelihood – recreation improvement’s “improv”, maybe. All through a inventive course of there’ll little question be surprises alongside the best way, parts you had not anticipated, or probabilities to take that simply occur to work out. Within the case of Excessive On Life 2, that got here within the type of the tutorial to assist get you on the brand new skateboard for the primary time.

“It’s very early on within the recreation, and to show the participant the right way to use their new skateboard now we have Gene search for a video on-line, and he exhibits it to you,” Robbins tells me. “The video is simply one thing I shot with my buddy Jon Millstein, a skater and comic, with my cellphone in a car parking zone close to the Los Angeles Zoo. I wrote this lengthy monologue for Jon to learn, stuffed with particular recreation controls and directions, and he memorized it practically on the spot in an alien masks. It’s one in all my favourite elements of the sport and it got here collectively rapidly on a budget, on the final minute. We shot it in an hour, I went dwelling and edited it that evening, and by the subsequent day it was already within the recreation. That’s the Squanch magic!”

This “magic” is what holds the ambitiously hilarious Excessive On Life 2 collectively, via crisp writing, inventive gameplay (skateboards!), and an extremely immersive world for us to discover. It’s developed with a swagger, assured that their humorousness will resonate with sufficient of us to take even larger swings at turning “enjoyable to play” into “humorous.” Excessive On Life 2 is about to indicate us what can occur when a bunch of inventive recreation builders craft one thing that’s centered round a singular function: To make us snort our asses off.