High On Life: Comedy shooter climbs to the top of Xbox Game Pass

Just over a week ago, the comedy shooter High On Life by Rick & Morty creator Justin Roiland was released and apparently took the Xbox Game Pass by storm.

Judging by the hours players put into High on Life in the first five days of release, the quirky alien adventure is According to Xbox officially the most popular Game Pass game of 2022. And not only that: Roiland’s work is also the most successful third-party and single-player title of the subscription service ever.

High On Life: Successfully rolled for humor

Even if High On Life didn’t perform brilliantly in our test because editor Matthias couldn’t discover an outstanding gaming experience despite the sparkling humor, at least one Game Pass user seems to have been interested enough to play it. It is not for nothing that the alien shooter leaves other titles of this year behind.

Mike Fridley, Director and COO of development studio Squanch Games, is thrilled: “This was our first game to be published on Game Pass and we have been blown away by the response from players, which has made us the most popular game on Game Pass to date. When Squanch Games first started, our goal was to make games we want to play, and Game Pass helps us reach the players who want to experience those games, too.”

Xbox General Manager for Content Planning, Matt Percy, said: “High On Life is an incredibly unique title that we’ve been looking forward to for a long time. It’s fantastic to see so many Game Pass subscribers hopping into the game at launch to experience the story of Squanch for themselves ahead of the holidays.”

What is High On Life about?

If, given its overwhelming success, you want to get a taste of the bizarre world of High On Life, but have no idea what awaits you there, here is a brief synopsis: Because an intergalactic drug cartel is threatening humanity, you have to trudge out of school as a freshman Youngster without goals in life with talking weapons in tow put a stop to the criminals.

Playfully, High On Life is a first-person shooter with a variety of experimental firearms and light Metroidvania elements designed to motivate exploration and backtracking. Smaller mysteries also want to be solved in the world imagined by Justin Roiland, while you are bombarded by his typical humor.