Ridiculous Shooter ‘High On Life’ is Coming to Meta Quest

Aliens have invaded Earth! That’s both the bad news and the good news. Yes, it’s bad your planet has been devastated and much of the population is slowly being turned into stimulants to be sold by a cosmic drug cartel. But on the other hand, you just graduated high school and really had nothing going on — and now you get to become a renowned and deadly intergalactic bounty hunter. Beats getting an office job!

This is Squanch Games’ ridiculous first-person shooter High On Life. Originally released as a flatscreen game in 2022, the game is entering a new dimension on Meta Quest 3 and 3S as High On Life VR, thanks to the folks at Flat2VR Studios.

What sets High On Life apart from other shooters is the fact that in this game, the guns are more than just cool weapons — they’re alive. And they talk. A lot. These guns are aliens known as Gatlians, and they’ll be your constant, often-unhinged companions as you fight to take down members of the cartel from across the galaxy. Over the course of the adventure, you’ll team up with five talking guns, and one extremely violent knife.

From insane characters and goofy situations, to over-the-top alien shootouts with ludicrous bosses, High On Life puts you into an absurd, hilarious world. And in VR, you’re not just fighting your way through it — you can reach out and touch it. Just don’t be shocked if it gets annoyed.

To celebrate the announcement of High On Life VR, we sat down with Flat2VR Producer Alastair Burns and Game Director Emily O’Neal to talk about the process of bringing High On Life to a new medium and how the game is changing with its new perspective.

High On Life was originally developed as a flatscreen game, so how did you decide to bring High On Life to VR?

Alastair Burns: There are a few characters involved in this story. And it is a really good one. Squanch Games started by making smaller projects, many of which were rooted in VR. As a VR dev, Flat2VR Studios was born out of the VR community and because of that, our respective lenses on what we’re hungry to play / try / mod / port are a little different to what you could call the mainstream. VR’s a pretty tight community and it likes a nice surprise so when our Meta friends said, “Hey” we were all like,”’Sup.” Trivialisation aside, we are all really happy we’re doing this and although it does feel special, it also feels a bit “just meant to be.”

How does VR change the High On Life experience, especially for players who enjoyed it on flat-screen? 

Emily O’Neal : Without being too on the nose, VR allows you to embody the bounty hunter character and everything that comes with that — the most important of which is handling your Gatlian weapons. These are the alien guns that help you fight off the alien drug cartel. We are really focused on making the VR interactions with these weapons feel really unique. They are living, breathing creatures that you can reload, poke, and pull. 

Additionally, the full power fantasy of the Bounty Suit includes being empowered with alien tech. The player gets to go from a regular teenager to a world-saving hero. One of the highlights for me is actually the HUD and UI elements. The futuristic technology world that Squanch created really lends itself to VR. Everything from the Warp Remote to the pause screen is diegetic in game, which has given us lots of opportunities for unique, in-world AR-esque UI and menus.

AB: For all players, whether you’ve enjoyed the flat version or not, in VR, you are the controller. There’s just a massive difference. I look and point or reach at what I want to grab, swing, shoot or operate. I’m not in a living room staring at a flatscreen with a fixed crosshair, I’m in Blim City. Everything we add reinforces that suspense of disbelief, and in particular, VR lends a real degree of freedom to the First-Person Shooter that just makes me feel there.

Did bringing High On Life to VR present any interesting challenges, surprises or opportunities?

AB: High On Life is so rich, with so many gags, jokes, and incidental things going on around you, that I find myself spending waaay more time just hanging out and drinking it all in. VR adds a unique immersion layer, and that’s what surprised me personally, that in HoL’s case I just take more time, I let the joke play out, enjoy the delivery. Even if it is something as functional as triggering my next bounty, or reloading my Gatlian. Everything just begs for me to poke it.

What cannot be ignored is the sheer technical challenge of taking something so rich and, frankly, huge (I am forever buying SSDs for the dev team) and engineering it in such a way that it all sings on a Quest 3, at 72fps stable. Remarkable machine that the Quest 3 is, it has been wicked good fun to push it really hard.

EO: The High On Life universe is nothing if not weird, and with that weirdness comes the urge to let players touch everything. The trap is that you can make things so manual it starts eating the pace of the game. So as a design team, we’re constantly going back and forth between a multi-step gesture and a smoother quick activation, then testing which one is actually more fun in combat.

High On Life is hilarious, and a lot of what makes it funny is unique to video games. Did moving to VR, and its differences from the feel of flatscreen games, offer any new opportunities to lean into jokes or ideas that previously might not have worked?

AB: For me, it’s more fundamental than that. I’ve had the pleasure of producing a bunch of games and High On Life is a real departure from the norm. I like to think of it as a sit-com wrapped in the vehicle of a game. You can really appreciate the layers of the story, the improv, the characters, and all the sketches in between. It’s been a real breath of fresh air — fast, no punches pulled, no stone left unturned, delightfully disruptive, and so rich. Everything is fair game for a laugh. I specifically notice that this effect is exaggerated in VR. I take more time, I’m caught up in the joke, it lands more.

How does the VR version differ from the original release? Is there new or different content? Did creating this version give you chances to revisit or expand on any elements of the game?

AB: In Flat2VR Studios Style, we’re faithful and true to the original effort. Squanch re-invented comedy in game dev by teaching comedians to appreciate, understand, and in some instances, roast development, rather than the other way around (game devs can be comedians, but it is a limited audience that appreciates our humour... Ho ho ho). But we’re VR devs, so we can add our own sauce. Can’t help it really.

So, boring answer: We identified a long list of features, interactions, and areas where we could really lean in and make a difference. It’s an interesting list as well, and includes sticking your hand in all sorts of places. How many other producers can say that, I wonder?

Is there anything else you want to add or talk about that we didn’t bring up?

EO: Squanch Games was created to tell stories in the most powerful, interactive, immersive way possible, and they started that journey in VR. So getting to bring the world of High On Life there feels like a bit of a homecoming. And honestly, in my opinion, I think VR is the best storytelling medium out there. There’s nothing quite like actually being somewhere. 

You can grab your Gatlian pals and venture through the galaxy in High On Life VR soon — preorder it now on the Meta Horizon Store.