Squanch Games is mixing skateboarding, murder mysteries, and alien gun comedy into High on Life 2, and based on IGN’s final hour-long preview that dropped December 18, the sequel is shaping up to deliver significantly more gameplay variety than its 2022 predecessor. The preview showcased three distinct gameplay sequences set in Pinkline Harbor, one of three hub areas you’ll explore when the game launches February 13, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Game Pass. From skateboarding through cruise ship pools to solving legitimate detective puzzles with notepads and suspect interrogations, High on Life 2 appears to be the bigger, weirder sequel that fans of the original wanted.
- Skateboarding Replaces Sprinting and It Works Beautifully
- Dialogue Choices Let Your Guns Actually Talk
- The Murder Mystery Is No Joke
- Three Hubs Replace Blim City’s Single Location
- The Justin Roiland Situation Looms Over Everything
- Improved Combat With Cooldown Management
- February 13, 2026 Release Across All Platforms
- FAQs
- Conclusion
Skateboarding Replaces Sprinting and It Works Beautifully
The most surprising addition to High on Life 2 is skateboarding, and it’s not just a gimmick tacked on for marketing purposes. When you press the sprint button, your outlaw hero deploys their board and starts riding, effectively replacing traditional running as your primary movement method. IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey noted he’s played countless first-person shooters throughout his career but had never encountered an FPS with skateboarding until now, and the implementation impressed him immediately.
The skateboarding mechanics include momentum physics like an actual skateboard, letting you catch air when skating through terrain features like empty pools on cruise ships. You can grind on rails to traverse open playspaces faster, creating fluid movement that feels natural rather than forced. The demo showcased basic puzzle-solving using the skateboard to reach locked doors, suggesting Squanch Games has integrated this mechanic deeply into level design rather than treating it as optional traversal.
Combat benefits enormously from skateboarding mobility. During a battle sequence where you fight through bounty-hunting enemies to board a ship, the skateboard combines with Knifey as a grappling hook to create dynamic traversal-based combat. If you keep moving across rails, through terrain features, and using the grapple, you become extremely difficult to hit. Mix in frequent use of each gun’s special attack cooldown abilities and you’ve got significantly more tactical depth than the first game’s relatively straightforward shooting.
Dialogue Choices Let Your Guns Actually Talk
One welcome improvement addresses a limitation from the original High on Life. Your alien guns are characters with distinct personalities voiced by talented comedic actors like JB Smoove from Curb Your Enthusiasm. In the first game, the guns you weren’t actively holding would chime in during conversations, but you had limited control over their interactions. High on Life 2 changes that with a dialogue choice system specifically for your gun characters.
When conversation options appear, you can choose responses from any of your equipped guns. If you select dialogue from a gun you’re not currently holding, your character automatically puts away the current weapon and pulls out the one whose response you chose. This small change adds personality and player agency to conversations while reinforcing that the guns are crew members with opinions, not just weapons that occasionally crack jokes.
The demo showcased this system during a bar sequence where you meet Travis, a down-on-his-luck alien gun getting drunk after fighting with his wife. Being able to choose which gun responds to Travis’s drunken ramblings creates comedy opportunities that wouldn’t exist if the game just played pre-scripted banter. It also encourages players to think about which gun’s personality fits each situation, adding role-playing depth to a shooter that primarily focuses on action and absurdist humor.
The Murder Mystery Is No Joke
IGN’s preview included a murder mystery sequence that exceeded expectations dramatically. Ryan McCaffrey went in expecting light clue-gathering followed by a simple accusation, something you’d breeze through in minutes before returning to shooting aliens. Instead, Squanch Games delivered a legitimate detective experience that requires actual investigation, note-taking, evidence gathering, and logical deduction to solve correctly.
You need to talk to all four suspects repeatedly, exhausting dialogue options and listening carefully for inconsistencies. Scouring the crime scene reveals both obvious and hidden clues that unlock new interrogation options. The game provides an on-screen notepad for tracking evidence and making connections between suspects, motives, and physical evidence. Eventually, you must not just accuse someone but credibly establish motive and present enough evidence to prove guilt.
The team clearly took this section seriously from both tonal and difficulty perspectives. This isn’t a comedy beat where you guess randomly and the game laughs at your failure before moving on. It’s a structured investigative challenge that rewards thoroughness and punishes sloppy detective work. The inclusion of substantial non-combat gameplay like this demonstrates Squanch’s commitment to variety, ensuring High on Life 2 offers more than just shooting galleries with funny dialogue between encounters.
Three Hubs Replace Blim City’s Single Location
High on Life 2 fundamentally changes the original’s structure by replacing Blim City’s single hub with three distinct hub areas, each substantially larger and more interactive. Squanch’s Creative and Art Director Mikey Spano explained they wanted Metroidvania elements but also needed to tell tight stories, so they kept all the backtracking, exploration, and unlockable areas within the hubs while making the story missions more linear and focused.
The new structure means you have a home base where you talk to your crew about objectives, then deploy into one of the three hubs. From there, you navigate to targets and missions, which trigger more linear experiences where Squanch can tell structured stories without players needing to repeatedly hear the same dialogue on return visits. After completing missions and acquiring new abilities, you return to hubs that now offer additional exploration opportunities, secret areas, and side content you couldn’t access before.
Squanch COO and Executive Producer Matty Studivan acknowledged Blim City was really cool but pretty small geographically. The three-hub approach represents a big step up in environmental variety and explorable space. Each hub contains hidden mini-games, entire genres tucked into side activities, and rewards for thorough exploration. Squanch even licensed real games like the NES title Bible Adventures that will appear as playable content within High on Life 2’s world, alongside in-game movie theaters screening full-length films.
The Justin Roiland Situation Looms Over Everything
High on Life became one of Game Pass’s biggest launches ever in December 2022, attracting millions of players with its crude humor, talking guns voiced by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, and irreverent attitude toward traditional shooter design. Then in January 2023, Roiland faced domestic abuse charges that were later dropped, followed by multiple allegations from former colleagues about toxic workplace behavior and inappropriate conduct. Roiland left Squanch Games shortly after.
High on Life 2 represents Squanch’s first major release without their controversial founder and creative voice. Roiland voiced multiple characters in the original game, and his improvisational comedy style defined much of its tone. The sequel faces the challenge of maintaining the irreverent humor and absurdist energy that made the first game popular while distancing itself from Roiland’s specific comedic sensibilities and the controversies surrounding him.
Based on previews and developer interviews, Squanch appears committed to moving forward with a refreshed creative direction that emphasizes absurdity, satire, and parody without relying on Roiland’s particular brand of shock humor and gross-out jokes. The cast includes returning voice actors like JB Smoove alongside new talent, and the High on Life DLC that released after Roiland’s departure provided early glimpses of this tonal shift. Whether fans embrace the changes or reject them as inferior to the original’s comedy remains the biggest unknown heading into February’s launch.
Improved Combat With Cooldown Management
The combat improvements extend beyond skateboarding traversal into weapon functionality and special ability management. Each gun has unique special attacks on individual cooldowns, preventing spam while encouraging you to cycle through your arsenal tactically. You can’t just find one overpowered weapon and spam its special ability. You need to use each gun’s cooldown ability, then switch to another while the first recharges, creating rhythm-based combat flow.
Knifey returns as your grappling hook melee weapon, now integrated more seamlessly into combat encounters. The original High on Life featured sometimes chaotic, less finely tuned shooting compared to dedicated FPS titles, but it created fun sandboxes for stupid amusing kills. The sequel maintains that energy while tightening the mechanical feedback and responsiveness, based on IGN’s impressions.
Enemy encounters scale to accommodate the improved mobility and weapon variety. Battles against bounty hunters showcase enemies positioned to exploit your movement patterns, forcing you to use rails, skateboard momentum, grappling, and terrain features defensively while maintaining offensive pressure. The marriage of traversal and combat creates scenarios where standing still gets you killed, but mastering movement makes you nearly untouchable.
February 13, 2026 Release Across All Platforms
High on Life 2 launches February 13, 2026 simultaneously on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Xbox Game Pass. The February date represents a slight delay from the original winter 2025 window announced during the June 2025 Xbox Games Showcase, but it keeps the game within the broad timeframe Squanch initially promised.
Day one Game Pass availability mirrors the original’s strategy, which contributed enormously to that game’s success. Millions of subscribers tried High on Life specifically because it cost nothing beyond their existing subscription, and positive word-of-mouth turned it into one of the service’s biggest hits. Squanch is counting on similar exposure for the sequel, though the absence of Justin Roiland’s star power and the baggage from his departure might impact initial interest.
IGN’s final preview suggests the sequel is significantly more ambitious than the original in scope, variety, and mechanical depth. Whether it maintains the comedy that made the first game a phenomenon while transitioning away from Roiland’s influence is the question that will determine High on Life 2’s reception. Based purely on gameplay, the skateboarding, murder mysteries, improved combat, and hub-based exploration suggest Squanch learned valuable lessons from the original and is delivering a sequel that addresses criticisms while expanding what worked.
FAQs
When does High on Life 2 release?
High on Life 2 launches February 13, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Xbox Game Pass. The game was originally announced for winter 2025 during the June 2025 Xbox Games Showcase but was slightly delayed to February 2026.
Does High on Life 2 have skateboarding?
Yes, skateboarding replaces sprinting as your primary movement method in High on Life 2. When you press the sprint button, your character deploys a skateboard with momentum physics, rail grinding, and air tricks. The skateboard integrates into combat and puzzle-solving throughout the campaign.
Is Justin Roiland involved in High on Life 2?
No, Justin Roiland left Squanch Games in early 2023 following domestic abuse charges that were later dropped and allegations of toxic workplace behavior. High on Life 2 is the studio’s first major release without their controversial founder, featuring a new cast and refreshed creative direction.
Does High on Life 2 have murder mysteries?
Yes, IGN’s preview showcased a legitimate murder mystery sequence requiring interrogations, evidence gathering, note-taking, and deduction to solve. You must talk to suspects repeatedly, find hidden clues, and credibly establish motive and guilt rather than just guessing randomly.
How many hub areas are in High on Life 2?
High on Life 2 features three hub areas compared to the original’s single Blim City hub. Each hub is substantially larger with Metroidvania-style exploration, unlockable areas, hidden mini-games, and side content that expands as you acquire new abilities during the campaign.
Will High on Life 2 be on Xbox Game Pass?
Yes, High on Life 2 launches day one on Xbox Game Pass for Console, PC, and Cloud on February 13, 2026. This mirrors the original game’s Game Pass strategy, which contributed to it becoming one of the service’s biggest launches ever in December 2022.
What new weapons are in High on Life 2?
High on Life 2 introduces new talking alien guns including the Flint Turtle and Sheath, a character voiced by Ralph Ineson who gets decapitated and turned into a weapon. JB Smoove from Curb Your Enthusiasm voices one of the new guns, joining returning weapons from the original game.
Is High on Life 2 coming to PlayStation?
Yes, High on Life 2 launches simultaneously on PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X and S on February 13, 2026. This differs from the original which was initially Xbox and PC exclusive before eventually coming to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
Conclusion
IGN’s final preview of High on Life 2 paints a picture of a sequel that’s significantly more ambitious than its 2022 predecessor in almost every measurable way. The addition of skateboarding as your primary traversal method transforms movement and combat into something far more dynamic than typical FPS gameplay. The legitimate murder mystery mechanics demonstrate Squanch’s commitment to variety beyond just shooting aliens and listening to guns crack jokes. The three-hub structure with Metroidvania exploration elements expands environmental scope while maintaining focused storytelling during linear mission sequences.
What makes the preview particularly encouraging is how naturally these disparate elements appear to integrate. Skateboarding isn’t just a gimmick for trailers. It’s your sprint function, seamlessly woven into combat, puzzles, and exploration. The murder mystery isn’t a throwaway side activity. It’s a substantial investigative challenge requiring note-taking and evidence analysis. The dialogue choices for your talking guns aren’t superficial flavor. They add genuine role-playing opportunities to conversations while reinforcing that your weapons are characters with personalities.
The elephant in the room remains Justin Roiland’s absence. High on Life succeeded partly because of Roiland’s comedic voice and Rick and Morty fans curious about his game work, but also because the core concept of talking alien guns in an absurdist sci-fi universe resonated with millions of players. Squanch faces the challenge of maintaining that irreverent energy while establishing a new creative identity separate from their controversial founder.
Based on the DLC that released after Roiland’s departure and the preview footage showcased throughout December’s IGN First coverage, Squanch appears to have found a tonal balance that preserves absurdist humor and satirical edge without relying on Roiland’s specific comedic sensibilities. The refreshed cast including JB Smoove, Ralph Ineson, and other talented voice actors suggests the sequel won’t lack personality or comedic timing even without its original creative voice.
Mechanically, High on Life 2 seems poised to address the original’s biggest criticism that combat was chaotic and less finely tuned than dedicated shooters. The improved traversal, cooldown-based special abilities, and integration of skateboarding and grappling into encounter design create tactical depth the first game lacked. If Squanch can maintain this variety across the full campaign rather than just the polished demo slice, the sequel could legitimately stand alongside quality first-person shooters rather than succeeding purely on comedy and novelty.
The three-hub Metroidvania structure addresses scope concerns while supporting replayability through hidden areas, mini-games, licensed retro games, and movie theaters screening full films. The decision to keep exploration and backtracking in hubs while making story missions more linear demonstrates smart design philosophy, giving players freedom when appropriate while maintaining narrative focus during critical sequences. This approach lets Squanch deliver the weird experimental moments that made the original beloved without derailing core storytelling.
February 13, 2026 isn’t far away. High on Life 2’s day one Game Pass availability will expose the sequel to millions of subscribers immediately, recreating the conditions that made the original such a phenomenon. Whether those players embrace this post-Roiland era of Squanch Games or reject it as inferior to the controversial original’s comedy remains the biggest unknown. But based purely on gameplay variety, mechanical improvements, and ambitious scope, the final preview suggests High on Life 2 has earned cautious optimism heading into launch. Squanch Games appears determined to prove they can deliver weird, funny, mechanically solid shooters with or without their infamous founder. In two months, we’ll find out if they succeeded.