High On Life

Details

High On Life is a sci-fi comedy 1st-person shooter game published by Squanch Games. I worked on the game as a content designer from October 2021 until the game's release in December 2022, after which I worked on the DLC. The player takes the role of a deadbeat dropout who works as a bounty hunter to save humanity from an alien drug cartel. We published the game to Steam and Xbox Game Pass in December, 2022. We were the most played game on Xbox Game Pass and the fourth most played title on the platform overall that week. We also garnered "Very Positive" reviews on Steam and we were the most purchased game the week of release. I primarily worked on content design (mission/gameplay design) for this project, and I also tested the game extensively throughout development.

Game Statistics:

Engine: Unreal 4
Platform: PC, Xbox, Playstation
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Team Size: 60
Time Spent on Project: 1.25 yrs

High On Life Top

Table of Contents

Overview

Overall Contributions

I primarily acted as the design owner for the 9-Torg bounty mission and the Blim City Ambush narrative mission, and I partnered with Rachel Clayton on Narrative Warp Base side content.

I scripted quest logic and gameplay in my assigned missions.
I acted as the ambassador for my missions and the player's experience there, coordinating with code and art when needed.
I implemented content in Blueprints, the Unreal world editor, Sequencer, and company-specific tools for narrative and combat.

I prototyped and iterated on scripting for Movie functionality, which would let us play Bink videos on in-world screens throughout the game at a reduced performance impact.

I tested runs of the whole game at each milestone up until release, finding and reporting bugs and playing with different playstyles in mind such as Combatant and Collector.

I monitored external playtests and asked questions to help improve the design of given levels or other aspects of the game.

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High On Life Overview

Highlights

Gameplay Highlights From Owned Content

Breakdown

By virtue of working at an Indie studio, I was able to stick my hands into many parts of High On Life. Here I'll delve into some moments of the game that I owned, and am most proud of, which represent a range of my capabilities.

9-Torg Mission - Getting Knifey

Objective Management and Save Points:

Acquiring Knifey involves a high number of important changes and choices that need to be saved off while the scene is progressing, including but not limited to:

whether the hideout entrance should be open or closed
which abilities should be enabled or disabled given the scene requirements
which black market ants the player has killed
how many practice swings the player took with Knifey

Footage Credit: Ernest Gamingway

Each state change had the potential to influence dialogue and gameplay in nonlinear ways. I balanced this through scripting for each possibility and breaking up objectives and save points into manageable chunks so the player could start the conversation from a coherent place if they quit and/or restarted.

Branching/Dynamic Narrative:

The narrative team asked for several different ways for the player to affect and activate dialogue in this scene, and I implemented this with complex Blueprints scripting.

For instance, if the player has listened at the door long enough to hear the story of a lost lover, I add an additional dialogue choice when knocking, letting them pretend to be that lover.
I also scripted dialog changes if the player swings Knifey around without hitting anyone, if they kill one or the other ant first, or if they wait too long during phases of the conversation.

All of this scripting contributed to the scene feeling organic and interactive, with the characters reacting to a high number of player verbs with comedic and subversive dialogue.

Blim City Ambush - Space Applebee's

Restaurant Experience Simulation:

When the player arrives at Space Applebee's and has a heart-to-heart with Kenny, their primary gun, the player simulates getting a meal while Kenny expounds on his tragic backstory, including getting interrupted by a cheerful waiter.

This presented several bespoke challenges I needed to overcome to make the scene feel seamless.

Footage Credit: Twisted

I hand-scripted waiter and host walking moments since their AI couldn't navigate the narrow space normally.
I integrated player animations into the booth so they could enter/exit the table in transforms the animators needed.
I implemented and iterated on scripting that let the player choose different food and drinks from the Applebee's menu, make those items appear in the waiter's hand for animations, and seamlessly set down the chosen item in front of the player.
I directed the player's camera at specific moments for maximum comedic timing and to distract the player from scene elements coming in and out.
I even implemented branching dialogue depending on whether the player paid the bill at the end, blended it into the next scene where Blim City gets attacked, and tied it to an achievement.

These all came together to create one of the most surreal and comedic moments in the game, all while delivering one of its biggest character twists. Our systems weren't built with this kind of gameplay moment in mind, but through leveraging the functionality we did have in unusual ways and working with engineers and animators, I made it work.

9-Torg Mission - Tutorials

By virtue of being the first full mission of the game, 9-Torg set the standard for all future missions, and it needed to teach the player a lot about basic combat and traversal mechanics. I set set out to make tutorials that didn't take the player out of the experience while still keeping the game's characteristic sense of humor. Here are a few examples:

Ability Tutorials
- Each alien gun ("Gatlian") the player collects over the course of the game has a special ability that can act as a tool in combat and puzzle solving. I introduce the player to these abilities through Kenny, the pistol-shaped Gatlian. I first introduce the puzzle-solving aspect of his "glob shot" ability, show variation, and then how it can be used in combat, gating each tutorial piece organically in the world.
Knifey Tutorial
- Mid-way through the mission, I introduce the player to Knifey, the player's melee weapon. This time, combat is the first utility introduced, followed by his use as a grappling hook for traversal to escape the black market hideout and get to the boss, 9-Torg.
Dodge Tutorial
- After the mission is finished, the player is prompted to buy the "dodge" ability from the local pawn shop. I created the short quest for this, then scripted the dialogue and quest logic for getting this ability and teaching the player how to use it.

Side Content - Movie Theater Warp Base

Learning and Teaching New Systems:

From mid-game onward, the player could summon unique narrative warp bases that were self-contained pieces of side content. Some offered puzzles, others ridiculous moral choices, but all were hilarious in their own way. In one of the ones I worked on, the player could summon a movie theater and watch an entire movie with commentary from Red Letter Media.

Footage Credit: Me

When I was assigned to work on this warp base, the tech we were using to show videos on in-game screens was in its infancy. But I helped prototype it on the design side, taught others how to use it, and leveraged my knowledge of its core systems to script unique functionality into this particular warp base.

I developed best practices for playing, stopping, pausing, and resuming in-game screens using the tech our engineers devised.
I was the first designer to go through the process of importing movies into the game to be used on screens and taught others how to use it.
I integrated the Red Letter Media commentary track into in-game dialogue (which no other videos do throughout the game), and blended it with gun dialogue reacting to the movie and the player's actions in the theater.
I created chair blueprints that players sit in and leave at will, which ended up being used by other designers in other key moments throughout the game.
I made sure the theater was performant and kept its place in the film if the player left to do other things.

While my other work was often localized on a per-mission basis, this project let me experience what it was like to create functionality that was used throughout the game, teach other colleagues how to use it, and answer questions about it as they came up.

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High On Life Highlights

More Fun Things

Other Moments and Mechanics I Created

Here's a quick look at other moments and parts of the game that I worked on as a content designer and owned by the time the game launched.

Slumsley and Slumsley's Mom
Footage Credit: Manugames92

5-Torg
Footage Credit: Manugames92

Luglox Family
Footage Credit: Rifle Gaming

9-Torg Boss Intro
Footage Credit: Kreative Chaos Guides & Walkthroughs

Slums Gate Guards
Footage Credit: Fazy Gaming

Cutie Town
Footage Credit: Gatlee

Fisherman
Footage Credit: Tommy

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High On Life - More Fun Things

Retrospective

What went well

Got a chance to learn from a lot of really nice, talented people of varied experience levels, and take my first studio title from Pre-Alpha to Launch.
Learned to wear several different hats and become acquainted with Unreal's more advanced capabilities in Blueprints, quest logic, NPCs, animations, navigation, streaming, combat, and save states.
Communicated well with the narrative team to make sure their vision was achieved with robustness and proper comedic timing.
Took on challenging tasks and saw them through, asking for help and feedback from designers, engineers, and artists if stuck.

What I learned

In remote work, you have to make an active effort to be on the same page as the rest of the team and figure out how things you need are progressing.
Task management is essential in large-scale productions, especially remote. Communicate with the production team as much as possible so they know how tasks are progressing. They can then either get you help or use you as a spare pair of hands.
Break up missions into separate pieces as much as possible so other folks can work on their own parts as needed while still letting you get your own tasks done.
Clean, readable scripting is good scripting, and it saves a lot of time when other people need to touch it and troubleshoot it. Heck, it also does a big favor to your future self.
Unreal is a robust editor, but it isn't perfect, and each studio has to use it differently. The conflict between core and custom features is something to be aware of and overcome.
Good comedic and dramatic moments take many passes of iteration to get right, especially for launch. Attention to detail is crucial to make them land well.
Unreal does not have a lot of in-built narrative support, but it can be properly cajoled into doing what you need it to.
Blueprints are great for designers and knowing how things work, but they don't always mesh well with optimization. Converting certain Blueprints functionality into code can help a lot with performance.

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High On Life Retro