Last night, members of Squanch Games gathered at NYCC to celebrate the release of their High on Knife DLC and discuss both its and the base game’s development. Moderated by pop culture writer Ashley Esqueda, CEO Mike Fridley, CCO and art director Mikey Spano, Chief Design Officer Erich Meyr, narrative director Alec Robbins, producer Aimee Achilli, and lead designer Andy Vatter all took the stage to offer insight into just how those disgusting characters were made. They also let slip that the brand new gun Harper’s backstory will be explored in an upcoming and unannounned comic series.
Concept art for Toxxo, the enormous NPC just chilling in a lake of poisonous water, included “groups of sleazy dudes in hot tubs,” according to Spano. He described his creative process as “I just get as baked as possible” and then he laughs at what he creates before presenting it to the team. There’s a level underneath Toxxo at a bar called Cheeks — both because his ass is jutting down from the ceiling and also because it’s a parody of Cheers. The studio made one little Frazier joke in the base game, and now they’re going to try to work Frazier into everything.
On the Duffalo — which were called “smuggle butts” for two years of development — Spano described them as “water weenies on legs” and “f—king disgusting.” He got a kick out of how they’re naked and gross, yet they wear Air Jordan-like shoes.
The DLC eventually moves to Muxxalon, and the entire level is a not-so-subtle jab at a certain dominant online retailer. Meyr said the team wanted something like a little Zelda horror dungeon. According to Spano, at one point in the development, Muxxalon was shipping exclusively humans. Muxxalon is run by Mux, an “amorphous blob” who can show up at any moment, playing on the idea that your boss can be anywhere, Robbins said. The level takes dark turns, going full sci-fi horror at times, but still remaining true to the tone and ethos of High on Life.
An early build of the DLC. That pink figure is a placeholder for Toxxo.
Towards the end of the discussion, Fridley summarized the studio’s attitude well by saying, “We’d rather have a joke be funny than ship on time.” Sometimes a simple joke made in a meeting can turn it into a year and half of development across all teams to have that joke be implemented in the game.
With a base game and DLC under its belt, Squanch Games is ready for what’s next — whatever that may be. “We have now have shipped two challenging projects with this tech” and that experience will now make future projects a bit easier, Spano said. Players of High on Life check out their most recent project, High on Knife, on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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