Designing the Excessive On Life 2 Skate Deck: Mixing Alien Vitality with Skate Tradition

Final week at GDC, Xbox hosted its annual ID@Xbox Showcase, which featured a handful of fantastic upcoming indie video games. For these in attendance, one of many distinctive objects available was a custom-designed skateboard deck with art work created by the wonderful artists at Squanch Video games that some have been fortunate sufficient to take house.

The mixture of parts right here makes complete sense in case you’ve had an opportunity to play Excessive On Life 2, which introduces skateboarding to its wild first-person shooter intergalactic journey. In speaking with Squanch Video games Artwork Supervisor Justin Mohlman, I realized extra about how this collaboration took place. He tells me they began by drawing upon inspiration from the colourful, daring aesthetics that outline each the sport and skate tradition. A kind of on the crew who helped hone that course of included Chief Artistic Officer and Artistic Director Mikey Spano, whose ardour for the ‘90s period shone by means of within the design.

“Excessive On Life 2 is vibrant, loud, bizarre, and unapologetic — wizards, lasers, aliens, slime; it’s all in there,” Mohlman explains. “For this deck, we targeted on alien power and dripping slime with daring, saturated shade. It’s chaotic in one of the simplest ways: Playful, gross, and enjoyable. It’s much less about one character and extra in regards to the general vibe, vibrant shade, slime, goo, aliens, and that robust ’90s power. That tone anchors every part.”

Skateboarding tradition performed a giant position in serving to form the decks’ aesthetic as nicely. As Mohlman notes, skate tradition has all the time embraced rad artwork — decks, graphics, tees, stickers, and graffiti all characteristic expressive designs. “Go to any skatepark and also you’ll see tagging and expressive artwork in all places. We wished one thing that felt prefer it belonged in that world: bizarre, barely gross, easy however placing. One thing that makes you go, ‘Yep, I need that one.’”

To assist bridge the hole between the sport’s distinctive visible fashion and conventional skate deck aesthetics, Mohlman’s crew collaborated with artists like Skinner and Lurk, who had additionally contributed graffiti and murals inside the sport. “Our idea crew explored a ton of enjoyable, off-the-wall concepts,” Mohlman says. “It wasn’t overthought — it was about power and impression. The three-eyed alien in slime turned the anchor as a result of it translated cleanly to a vertical deck format and nonetheless felt daring.”

That central motif, of the three-eyed alien design surrounded by slime, additionally translated completely to the vertical deck format, offering a daring anchor that unified the design and ensured it will stand out each in-game and in skateparks. What began as a inexperienced, three-eyed alien dripping in slime developed additional as soon as idea artist Jeremy Fenske labored the Xbox “X” into every eye and pushed the colour variations additional.

“Our course of is fairly simple: Does it look cool? Sure? Nice. Make it clear, print-ready, and ship it. Squanch provides artists plenty of artistic freedom — that’s a part of why the work feels genuine,” Mohlman tells me. “Hopefully followers join with it the best way we did, whether or not it finally ends up on a wall or will get dropped right into a bowl and worn down the best way it needs to be.”

Excessive On Life 2 x ID@Xbox Skate Deck Giveaway

Now that you just’ve realized about its creation, we’re excited to share that Squanch Video games is holding a limited-timed giveaway in your likelihood to win one in every of these custom-designed skate decks.

Beginning in the present day, March 17, 2026, and working by means of to 11:59pm PT on March 23, 2026, go to the Excessive On Life Instagram web page, observe @highonlifegame and @Xbox on Instagram, and tag pals within the feedback who must play (or have performed) Excessive On Life 2. That’s it!

That is restricted to residents in the US solely and winners can be chosen at random and can be contacted instantly from the Excessive On Life Instagram account. Study extra in regards to the giveaway entry guidelines right here. Good luck!

Excessive On Life 2 is accessible in the present day for Xbox Sequence X|S, Xbox on PC, and with Sport Cross Final with assist for Xbox Play Wherever.

Excessive On Life 2

Squanch Video games, Inc.

☆☆☆☆☆
1632

★★★★★

$59.99

$53.99

PC Sport Cross

Xbox Sport Cross

You’ve executed it. You’ve taken down an intergalactic cartel, introduced humanity again from the brink of extinction, and hunted harmful bounties to the far corners of the galaxy. Bounty searching has introduced you fortune, fame and love; however when a mysterious determine out of your previous reappears and places a worth in your sister’s head, your comfortable life will get thrown into chaos.

Do you could have what it takes to danger all of it and produce down an intergalactic conspiracy that when once more threatens your favourite species (people)?

Excessive On Life RETURNS as you and the one that you love rag-tag crew of alien misfits shoot, stab, and skate your approach by means of beautiful, harmful worlds all throughout the galaxy to explode the EVIL pharmaceutical conglomerate hell-bent on placing worth tags on HUMAN LIFE!