Video Game / High on Life

Saving the human race, one cartel boss at a time.

High on Life is an FPS game by Squanch Games, a studio co-founded by Justin Roiland, for Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. It was released on December 13, 2022 with the Playstation version coming on July 22nd.

Earth suffers an Alien Invasion by the G3 Cartel, who wants to sell humans as their newest psychedelic drug. Unbeknownst to them, an unassuming teenager and their sister Lizzie manage to escape with the help of talking alien gun Kenny. After acquiring a Bounty Hunter suit from ex-bounty hunter Gene Zaroothian, the player sets out to collect the bounties on the heads of the Cartel and save Earth.

A DLC, "High on Knife" was announced. Taking place two years after the events of the main story, it focuses on Knifey and shifts to a more Survival Horror tone.

Titan Comics published a sequel High On Life series in 2024 written by Alec Robbins and art by Kit Wallis and JP Jordan.

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Tropes present in High on Life:

• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • During the penultimate Bounty hunting mission against Nipulon, he douses his office with drug-laced gas that sends the Bounty Hunter and the Gatliens on a shared bad trip, complete with continuing to fight multiple hallucinatory versions of Nipulon in addition to getting questioned over their choices and actions by visions of Gene and Lizzie. After managing to hash out their team's collective baggage over Kenny's accidental role in the G3 cartel destroying Gatlas, they return to 'reality', a longer-than-normal corridor leading to Nipulon's office absolutely packed with clones of himself... and hallucinate themselves with four arms, each wielding one of their Gatleins and firing all at once, tearing through the small army to reach Nipulon and finishing him off with Knifey. Messily.
  • The final Gatlien Lezduit is the most powerful of the weapons, being a Lightning Gun that can hit multiple enemies and do substantial damage to bosses. Naturally, you acquire it for the finale.
• Abnormal Ammo: Creature fires his children as projectiles do deal damage over time. Sweezy fires crystals.
• Aerith and Bob: Names are all over the place in the game, from Kenny, to Gene, to 9-Torg, to Garmantuous, to Knifey.
• Affectionate Nickname: Sweezy claims she was doing this the whole game if you pull her out when you're about to insert a Gatlien into Garmantuous' anal cavity to activate the bomb, saying she was calling you a dipshit because she loves you.
• Alien Catnip: Humans, which kicks off the entire plot of the game. Facilitating this are machines sold by the G3 called Hyperbongs, which can drain the life from a creature and process it into a recreationally smokable form, with certain species being ideal for such processing. Garmantuous' species possesses this ability naturally , and Hyperbongs function as a way to mechanically replicate and commercialize it.
  • Gatliens have Gatteral, a blue and yellow candylike substance found growing on plants throughout the galaxy that functions as a combination high energy food and general wellness drug. What this means for you is, if you feed a Gatlien a chunk of Gatteral, it instantly bypasses the cooldown on their Trick Hole ability.
• Aliens Are Bastards: The G3 are an alien drug cartel that are kidnapping humans to be used as drugs. Nonetheless there are plenty of helpful aliens.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • Parodied with the Merkaloids. Although one forum user tries to defend them, some non-hostile Merks outright state that all of them (themselves included) join the G3. When Kenny is incredulous that an entire species would join a criminal organization, the Merk admits that it's only about 80%...but the other 20% get bullied about it so much that they eventually join anyway.
  • According to 5-Torg, all Torg clones are evil with her stating that after taking over from 9-Torg she'll still be a crimelord. If you attack her she'll state that's standard Torg behavior.
• Ambiguously Related: Acknowledged by Knifey, he questions on what exactly he is. He's a sentient weapon just like the Gatliens, but unlike them, who all work like guns, Knifey is... a knife. If you idle in Douglas' room, he ponders if he's also a Gatlien or if he's from some other planet of sentient weapons.
• And I Must Scream: Gene may have brought back Lezduit, but he messed up his speech patterns; in other words, he can only say his name. That said, Lezduit isn't entirely brain-dead; when he "talks" with Kenny after waking up, you can pick up the sadness in his voice, hinting that some part of him knows what's going on and wants to say so much to his old friend but can't.
• Appropriated Appelation: It is implied that "creature" was just what the scientists experimenting on him called him and Creature took it up after forgetting his own name. Supporting this, Kenny reacts like Creature is a weird name for a Gatlien, and Creature replies with something akin to a Sure, Let's Go with That. Furthermore, Creature's memories of his pre-experimentation life are nearly non-existent; he doesn't know who Lezduit is and doesn't remember Gatlas.
• Arm Cannon: Creature fits over the Bounty Hunter's arm like a sleeve.
• Asshole Victim: Using the 'Trolly' warp disk will present the Bounty Hunter with a Sadistic Choice of choosing to let a single alien or 5 aliens Chained to a Railway get killed by the eponymous vehicle. However, muddying the morality of their choice is that one of the 5 happily reveals that he's committed genocide in the past and will proceed to commit more genocide in the future if he survives, forcing the Bounty Hunter to decide whether sacrificing the lives of 4 innocents is worth it to kill him, or if sacrificing an innocent lone alien to spare the other 4 is the better choice.
• Ass Shove: How Garmantuous is finished off, with the Bounty Hunter manually inserting a bomb up his rear entrance to bypass his incredibly tough skin after beating him up enough to knock him onto his back, only for the remote detonator to fail. With no other ways of accessing the bomb, they then insert one of their Gatlians (Kenny willingly, the others less so) inside as well for a manual detonation, complete with Gross-Up Close-Up both times.
• A-Team Firing: Mooks will frequently miss shots from less than ten meters away. It's possible for them to miss enough shots for so long that you can start regenerating health by standing still. It's implied this comes from the G3 Mooks having brain-dead/zombified Gatleins grafted onto their arms, making them harder to use than the free-willed ones the Bounty Hunter assembles. This gets Downplayed on Hunter Mode though, as they're more accurate with their shots, fire more often, and their blasts hit harder, but there's still a noticeable scattershot effect with their blasts mid-combat.
• The Atoner: After revealing that he indirectly caused the destruction of Gatlas, Kenny is very willing to let Gus and Sweezy beat him up over it, but still wants to stop the G3. He's accepting of the anger and accepts a lot of their abuse as fair, but he still tries to defend himself sometimes, saying he simply had no idea what would happen. However, they all come to something of an understanding in a wild drug trip, and while Gus and Sweezy are still pissed off at Kenny, they're capable of sympathizing with him, although it's still a rather complicated set of feelings.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Gatliens' usage as Fantastic Firearms led the G3 cartel to infect their homeworld with a Zombie Apocalypse, using the bodies of the resulting brain-dead and compliant Gatliens to arm their Mooks by literally grafting them onto their arms. Despite giving their soldiers easily-producible weapons with Bottomless Magazines, the Gatleins are only capable of standard plasma blasts in this state, and lack access to their unique Trick Hole abilities, whereas the small team the Bounty Hunter assembles turns them into a One-Man Army through swapping between their various firing methods. It's implied the Cartel realised the inefficiency of Zombifying the entire race, hence why the few survivors were forced into compliance with inhibitor chips instead, allowing the upper brass to use their unique powers in the few boss fights that feature them. Likewise, grafting a gun permanently onto one's hand prevents it being used for anything else ever again, limiting the versatility of the wielder, which gets Lampshaded by one Merkaloid in Skrendal labs, about to undergo the procedure. He has to decide whether using his dominant or non-dominant hand would be the better choice to get the Gatlien stuck onto, and it's implied issues with this contribute to most of the enemies' A-Team Firing against the Bounty Hunter.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Knifey is insanely violent and devoted to killing. The aliens who have him even complain about this. The in-game glossary states that his tether ability causes permanent brain damage every time it's used, which might contribute to this.
  • A case can be made that the Bounty Hunter is a Downplayed version of this as well, given they near-instantly step into the role of gruesomely murdering aliens for survival and convenience once they gain access to Kenny, capable of some surprisingly violent executions with Knifey once he's found and equipped. Gene expresses surprise at how quickly they acclimated to the role of a Bounty Hunter, even with their prior experience at FPS games before, and there are several moments where the Bounty Hunter can shoot annoying, but otherwise-harmless NPCs harassing them, with it being Lampshaded that them resorting to lethal violence over minor grievances is a pretty psychotic choice of action.
  • If the Bounty Hunter sides with Gene and says that Lizzie's alien boyfriend Tweeg cannot stay at their house, he'll later kidnap her and try to sell her to the G3 cartel. When the Bounty Hunter eventually manage to teleport straight into Tweeg's space RV for a rescue, they'll discover a thoroughly blood-splattered Lizzie sitting over Tweeg's corpse, who'll then recount his painful demise and the euphoria she got out of killing him in a completely calm tone, admitting that she's starting to like the idea of helping out with the Bounty Hunter's kills now she's got a taste for violence, indicating that It Runs In The Blood between them. Kenny is utterly freaked out at the sight of his body and intimidated towards her afterwards.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Nipulon’s fight invokes this when he drugs you. What follows can only be described as him trying to put you on a bad drug trip as visions of Gene and Lizzie try to talk you down. But this only winds up backfiring on Nipulon as it makes the bounty Hunter self actualize and the guns actually start to forgive Kenny making the team stronger than ever.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: 9-Torg, a humanoid mantis alien and the first boss of the game, uses humanoid ants as henchmen.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Bounty Hunter and their team successfully kill Garmantuous and dismantle the G3 cartel, with the Gatlien chosen to finish him off even surviving their Heroic Sacrifice as well. Lizzie and Gene seem to have come to something of an understanding and Lizzie is beginning to adapt to life in space in a more healthy manner, even helping Gene revive Lezduit and taking a more pro-active role helping out the Bounty Hunter with their missions. Even the Hunter's parents managed to make it out alive as seen in the credits. However, Earth is still left a blighted wasteland covered with the Cartel's machinery, and will not be recovering any time soon. And if the player investigates Clugg's office to find a special warp drive to the human haven you've been placing rescued humans in all game, exploring the area and finding the secret vent will reveal the 'haven' is actually the secret lab of Dr. Gurgula, who was in cahoots with Clugg all along and experimenting on your rescuees. With Clugg's duplicity revealed, Gurgula disposes of him, reveals that he was the one who designed the bio-weapon that destroyed Gatlas, and teleports away without the Hunter being able to stop him, making it clear to them before he goes that he believes the human species is the key to his research, and he has further plans in mind for them. At the end, whilst the Bounty Hunter has made the galaxy a better place and Clugg's sons promise to look after the surviving humans in the Haven until Earth is eventually made habitable once more, for the immediate future, their personal situation with their home planet is little better off than it was before.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: A slight example; Clugg Nuggman, in his official press statement announcing his alliance with the Bounty Hunter, says that he's fighting against drugs specifically, and he later states that humans are technically a living drug, indicating that he primarily sees humanity as a drug ingredient that's fallen in the wrong hands.
• Body Horror: Creature is the end result of amoral experimentation screwing with Gatlien physiology. Rather painful experimentation at that, if his agonized screams when you find him are any inducation. He has several parts that appear to be mostly exposed nerves, especially his open air womb/magazine bit, and the Bounty Hunter has to insert their hand into him via a sphincter that none of the others have. All of this is Played for Laughs, as while he's not shy about admitting he thinks he's a freak, he's an incorrigible optimist and all around chipper, cheery fellow.
  • Played utterly straight with Lezduit. He's found held in a similar machine to Creature, but he's barely alive and is covered in extremely extensive cybernetics, to the point he more resembles an engine block with a dead Gatlien shoved inside than a living being at all. It's so heavily integrated into him that even a bit of tinkering on Gene's part fries his speech center and comes dangerously close to severing his optic nerves.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Dr. Gurgula dispatches Clugg if he leads the Bounty Hunter to his location.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: If you shoot Douglas before his boss encounter, then he will die upon reaching his suit and you will instead fight his corpse inside his suit. The fight is more or less the same except he doesn't summon any G3 grunts and you get some humorous dialogue from Gus.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: All the time, from Kenny berating the player for pausing during the tutorial to Gene complaining you don't have to do everything the UI says if you stab him at Knifey's urging.
• But Thou Must!:
  • If the Bounty Hunter wants to, they can wait a whole hour during the G3 orientation training for the door to open to the next area, despite your armory's protestation you find another way to hurry it up, but if they successfully run out the clock, the door will jam and fail to open, forcing them to find another way around anyway.
  • Even if the Bounty Hunter picks up on Douglas' ruse as 'Dr. Joopy' or listens to Gus and shoots him during any one of the pipe puzzles, his body will fall back into the pipe and the team realises that they still need to complete the puzzle anyway to deposit Douglas' corpse back in his office so they can carve proof of kill off of him. And when they do eventually enter Douglas' offices, Douglas' suit will detect his death and enable autopilot mode, resulting in a boss fight with him anyway, but this time with his dead body stuffed inside a moving suit.
• Came Back Wrong: Gene's revival of Lezduit brings him back to almost full health, except he cannot say anything but his own name, and it's implied that he's not fully aware of everything that's going on, since unlike the other Gatliens sans Kenny, he's visibly eager to be inserted into Garmantuous to finish him off.
• The Cartel: The G3 Cartel are the main antagonists of the game. Their purpose on Earth is to capture humans to use them as some form of drug.
• Covered in Gunge: Most of the Cartel mooks you encounter are encased in a yellow "alien goop armor" that gets blasted away by your shots. This becomes a Plot Point when the Bounty Hunter needs to disguise themself as a Cartel mook.
• Create Your Own Hero: Garmantuous having one of his men shot dead on your street shortly after arriving on Earth and 'sampling' the local product ultimately enables the Bounty Hunter to rescue Kenny from his corpse after the cartel boss leaves and follow the Gatlien's instructions to safely flee Earth before they're captured with the rest of humanity, eventually becoming a powerful and skilled Bounty Hunter with a grudge against the G3 cartel, specifically targeting the upper leadership.
• Dada Ad: Calling back to Justin Roiland's most noteworthy previous project, the "This TM" Commercial is barely comprehensible nonsense that could only have been produced from a pure stream of consciousness.
• Death of a Child:
  • 5-Torg reveals that the numbers of the Torgs don't refer to their number in the cloning line (as guessed earlier), but their actual ages, meaning 9-Torg is literally 9 years old, though they note their species matures very rapidly, meaning by their terms she was actually old, zigzagging the trope overall.
  • Played for very Black Comedy and ultimately subverted. When you first enter the Slums, you come across an incredibly annoying kid who does nothing but insult you and block your way forward while taunting you into shooting him. If you finally have enough and shoot him, Kenny is rightfully horrified. Moments later, the kid's mother puts a damper on the horror by revealing that not only was he annoying to every person who came by and she'd only miss him a little bit, but he was actually over 30 years old, albeit still a child by their species' standards.
  Kenny: Alright there, you happy now? Wow, I didn't think we'd be allowed to kill him. Normally killing children in games isn't allowed, but he's dead. We killed this kid. Are you happy now? We killed a kid! A kid is dead now! There goes our E for Everybody rating.
  • Played for Drama when the Bounty Hunter goes undercover to enter Nipulon's offices, covering themselves in goop to pretend to be an alien patron wanting to sample the merchandise. They're walked through a room filled with members of Garmantuous' species draining and killing humans for drug highs around them, with one patron even asking a waiter for more babies, saying that they like them 'young and innocent', which helps push the Bounty Hunter to their Rage Breaking Point shortly afterwards.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • When Douglas tells you to wait for an hour for the door to open, you're supposed to find another way, since Kenny isn't very happy with the idea of actually waiting a whole hour. Nothing's stopping you from staying however, and Douglas will acknowledge you having waited for so long while also chastising you for thinking you'll get any praise. After a full 60 minutes, Douglas will sarcastically congratulate you before trying to open the door, only for it to get stuck.
  • If you figure out beforehand that Dr. Joopy is actually Douglas and kill him, the following dialogue and boss fight will change to acknowledge that Douglas is mortally wounded and, by the point he's in his suit, dead. The fight will then be against his suit on autopilot while his body flops around in it.
  • If it takes a while for the player to shoot the G3 when Kenny is acquired for the first time, he asks if they've never played a videogame before. If you pause the game, Kenny complains about it.
  • Suit-O will react if you try to ignore the Waypoint or Running tips.
  • Using level geometry for Sequence Breaking may prompt Suit-O to ask if you're Speedrunnig.
• Diegetic Character Creation: The game starts with your sister doing a line of coke and hallucinating that your face is morphing, leading into the character customization. Granted, this is entirely Played for Laughs since the game is first person and you put on 24-Hour Armor before you even get a chance to see your own face again.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Gatliens have the ability to fire projectiles out of their "trick holes" which are on their backsides. Kenny compares the slower recharge of his globshot around enemies as being similar to how it is hard to urinate if someone is watching.
  • Also there’s this, the reload animation which has you cock Kenny like you’d cock a pistol. After reloading he gets a smile and an almost relaxed look on his face for a second.
• Double-Meaning Title: High On Life refers both to the Bounty Hunter's newfound joy for killing aliens and the G3 Cartel literally using life to get high.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Magistrate of Blim City, Clugg Nuggman, can be seen on billboards early in the game before you actually get to meet him in person.
• Equippable Ally: The gatliens are an alien species that resemble Standard FPS Guns except Knifey. They blur the line between this and Living Weapon, as they are fully sapient but are shaped like and function as weapons. Knifey in particular can't do anything but hop slightly when placed onto a table — and given how absolutely nuts he is about killing, this is arguably a beneficial thing for everybody in his immediate area.
• Establishing Character Moment: Garmantuous's first appearance involves him smoking an old man with dementia and having one of his goons shoot the alien in front of him. This is before the Translator Microbes allow the bounty hunter to understand alien speech, but context implies that the alien was the one who discovered Earth and that Garmantuous killed him rather than pay a finder's fee.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Happens when Gus figures out that Dr. Joopy is Douglas all along. Douglas drops his gentle voice and it sounds deep and gruff.
• Excuse Plot: In-Universe, the plot of the protagonist's FPS is that that game's hero's ex-wife is dating aliens and sending them after the hero (and they're a hive mind so there's only one sprite), something the tutorial character lampshades.
• Exotic Equipment: Tweeg and Lizzie have a conversation that makes it clear that their genitalia are vastly incompatible. Tweeg compares the difficulty of having sex with her to solving the Franchise/Hell Raiser puzzle box.
• Eye Scream: Gene has a noticeably floppy and blackened tentacle eyestalk on his far left side, with some of Knifey's comments indicating that he's had said injury for a long time, even before he lost his legs. One of Knifey's execution animations of the lesser cyclops Mooks has him be stabbed into their eyeball before getting used as leverage to graphically pull the whole thing out.
• The Faceless: Double Subverted: The start of the game has the player character be allowed to choose their gender and ethnicity from a number of preset appearances, as Lizzie is snorting some powerful cocaine to preemptively celebrate them getting the house to themselves for a week and having trouble focusing on their sibling's appearance, and this affects their hands' appearance during the opening invasion, but once they successfully find Gene in Blim city, his full-body bounty Hunter suit comes with an opaque helmet and hand coverings, and is worn for the rest of the game, meaning that their appearance only really matters for a short while.
• Fake Interactivity: The Character Customization lets you flip between several appearances before you start, but they have absolutely zero impact on your character, they are a Heroic Mute and most of the game has you in a spacesuit with an opaque helmet.
• Fake-Out Opening: Done twice. First is that you begin in a hugely stereotypical Retraux first person shooter, which has your sister interrupt it to announce she's about to have a big party since your parents are away... then the aliens interrupt that to lead into the real plot.
• Fantastic Firearms: Instead of guns, the Bounty Hunter wields Gatliens, which happen to be held the same way and behave the same way as a gun.
• Foreshadowing: One of the bounties, Douglas, has an opaque helmet, much like the Bounty Hunter's, that obscures his face, but has noticeably tentacle-like arms visible through his suit's design. On his way to finding Douglas, the Bounter Hunter finds and helps an aquatic octopoid called Dr. Joopy who claims Douglas has his family, routing several pipes around in order to make a path for him to reach Doulglas' offices where they're being held. As it turns out, said being actually is Douglas, who got throughly wasted after a party and found himself outside without his power suit when he came to, tricking the Hunter into helping him regain the Powered Armour he needs for his boss fight. If you have Gus constantly equipped throughout the level, he'll pick up holes in 'Dr. Joopy's' performance, such as the fact he keeps changing the names of his children, and point this out to the Bounty Hunter as well, advising they just blast him.
• Gainax Ending: High on Knife ends with Knifey killing his family, then flying into space to murder everyone who appeared in the DLC, then stabbing the credits themselves while insulting everyone who worked on the game. The final post-credits scene seems to imply that at least some of this was Knifey hallucinating.
• Game Over: VITALS LOST
• Happily Adopted: Since the Bounty Hunter can be of any ethnicity while Lizzie and their parents are Caucasian, the Bounty Hunter themselves could potentially be this trope.
• Heroic Mime: The protagonist never speaks - even in most dialogue choices (the Gatlians normally do the talking). Lizzie lampshades this by sending you a message about how she's excited for you to meet Tweeg; then she warns you not to say anything embarrassing, followed by her remarking how you never speak anyway. On the way back to the house after killing 9-Torg, she'll start messaging you after Gene hooked her up with your suit's ID number, brushing off his claims that you're absolutely dead after trying to kill a dangerous criminal as a newly-minted bounty hunter. She'll tell you to respond to prove him wrong; after you fail to respond, she'll start questioning if your radio silence is because you actually are dead, or if you just don't know how to respond to messages.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Kenny manually detonates a bomb inside Garmantuous, fondly telling the Bounty Hunter that he'll always be with them. Subverted in that he survives as well as the fact that you can choose to shove the other Gatliens, who are far more reluctant to do the sacrifice and also survive.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: According to Kenny, Gene was once the galaxy's greatest bounty hunter. Now, however, he's a crippled, homeless, out-of-shape, dirt-poor hobo reduced to mooching off of you and your sister in exchange for his old bounty hunting gear.
• Human Resources: Humans are being abducted to be used as drugs. Dr. Gurgula however, has different plans in mind for them, believing that Humans are somehow the key to his research, and thus has Clugg assist the Bounty Hunter in taking down the G3 cartel as well as transporting captive humans into a 'safe' human habitat. This allows him to harvest multiple test subjects for experimentation without lifting a finger and also removes a group that's harvesting said valuable resource to potential extinction, with the Bounty Hunter and their team not finding out the truth until after they've destroyed the cartel and unwittingly allowed him to harvest all the data he needs for now.
• Humans Are Special: Humans have something in their brains that's unique in the universe, according to Dr. Gurgula. He leaves without explaining.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Three levels which can be switched between at any time.
  • Story Mode, where enemy fire is basically a light show.
  • Normal Mode, which offers a fair challenge but you'll rarely see the Game Over screen.
  • Hunter Mode, which grants enemies amplified damage and accuracy, so expect to constantly be seeing "Shield Broken" and "Vitals Low" warnings.
• I Have Your Wife: Garmantuous threatens multiple times to harm the two people the Bounty Hunter loves most, leading to speculation from the characters that he has the Bounty Hunter's parents. Not only are they not the player's parents, instead being celebrities Jack Black and Susan Sarandon, but he ruins it by abruptly turning them into Ludicrous Gibs.
  Garmantuous: So what, you don't love these two? Because every human I asked said they loved 'em!
• I Know Mortal Kombat: The player character's retro FPS skills enable them to almost instantly jump into the life of an interplanetary bounty hunter when they're stuck in space and hunting a hostile alien cartel.
• Insane Troll Logic: Dr. Giblets leaves a deathtrap for his would-be killer, with his recording slowly deducing the identity of the assassin by how long they survive. Eventually, he realizes that the only person badass enough to survive every wave is himself, so he must have killed himself (admitting he'd been considering it for a while in his paranoia), which is suicide, so the person locked in the arena is forgiven and let go.
• Instant Expert: Downplayed. The player character spent large lengths of time playing FPS games whilst at their house, with part of the game's combat tutorials being presented through one such game, enabling them to quickly adjust to using Kenny to defend themselves and successfully steal a warp drive to escape earth. However, a Gatlien's biology means they don't have to worry about maintenance or manual reloading in a fight, meaning they can aim and shoot well, but not handle actual firearms themselves without prior training. Their hand-to-hand skills with Knifey are also unexplained, as well as some of the Le Parkour traversal stunts they can pull off once upgraded with the right gear, though it's implied the Bounty suit is helping with their physical performance.
• Interface Spoiler: Looking at the controls in the menu spoils the existence of a fifth Gatlien, Lezduit.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Used pretty frequently thanks to the nature of the Gatliens, who sometimes blur the line between enjoying the visceral rush of a good combat high and using their various abilities to blow enemies apart, to getting off on it. Kenny's 'reload' animation in particular has him getting a pleased expression when 'cocked'. Knifey stands out from the others though, implicitly relishing being inserted into other living organisms and getting himself and the Bounty Hunter drenched in their fluids, with his dialogue blurring the line between it being akin to a drug or sexual high for him.
  Knifey: (Upon being used to remove proof of kill from Krubis' corpse) Let me in there! Oh God, this feels amazing! You have no idea! Aw God, I'm in... I'm in heaven right now. Aw, you should see this! Aw, ripping' through his drill tendons like they're butter! Aw, fuck, aw, awwwwww! Ahh, I was really getting' my glumps off there wasn't I? Sorry about that.
• Interspecies Romance: During one of the player character's bounty hunts, Lizzie comes across an alien named Tweeg, who she starts going out with against Gene's wishes. Later, it becomes clear that she just wants something normal in her abnormal life and that she feels like a Fish out of Water in Blim City. There's also how things don't work out how they planned in the bedroom and how Tweeg planned to sell her out to G3.
• Irony:
  • The planet you visit in the High on Knife Dlc, Peroxis is a salty desert planet inhabited by snail like aliens with health issues.
  • Knifey's race prided themselves for being entirely peaceful...despite the fact that they're, y'know, shaped like combat knives.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gene doesn't start out as the most pleasant of folks to be around, since he outright state that he plans to use the player character's couch as a toilet, constantly bickers with Lizzie, only agrees to help them save their species on the condition that he stays at their house and gets to keep it if the player character dies, and even installs a self-destruct feature in his old bounty hunter's suit so he can exploit the loophole of their deal. However, he begins to genuinely care for them both and even tries to talk Lizzie out of dating someone she just met. By the end, he's genuinely amazed that the player character was able to singlehandedly bring down the largest drug cartel in the galaxy and says how he has come to like (and fear) them.
• Lampshade Hanging: Kenny may as well be a living lampshade instead of a gun.
• Literal Metaphor: On the route down to the slums, one of the aliens on the side of the path tells you that he broke his leg coming down the pipe to enter the area... as in, it's literally broken off and separated from his body, lying right in front of him. He doesn't seem to be too upset about it, talking about his agony in a matter-of-fact tone.
• Living Weapon: Gatliens. They're aliens that look like guns, can fire like guns, and are wielded like guns. Knifey also counts, being a sentient knife that can be used to either stab or traverse around the environment with his tether ability, but an optional conversation has him questioning whether or not he's actually the same species as the others, given he can't shoot like them and can barely move on his own, resorting to trying to beg others to violently stab him into others to attack, which he greatly enjoys.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Creature doesn't remember Gatlus at all, and as such he doesn't have the same perspective as the other Gatleans. For instance, he doesn't know much about Lezduit while the others speak of him with respect and awe, and marvels firsthand how powerful he is when the Bounty Hunter uses him in combat.
• Made of Iron:
  • Even before they get their bounty hunting suit with its equipped shield function, the Bounty Hunter proves to be fairly durable, able to withstand several plasma shots from G3 Mooks swarming their street whilst wearing only civilian clothing, even on the hardest difficulty.
  • Garmantuous is even more so, with Gene commenting that his skin is practically impenetrable. Integrated into the gameplay by having even Lezduit's immense damage do only 10% of his health bar. The other guns technically do damage Garmantuous, but his healthpool is so large that it really doesn't matter. Even after the Bounty Hunter destroys his floating transport, he recovers after a while for a second round of intense fighting, practically the only boss in the game that does so, mocking the Bounty Hunter that he can keep fighting through whatever punishment they dish out. Ultimately, the only way to reliably kill him in an massive explosive inserted into his insides, bypassing his tough skin to rip him apart from the inside out. Given he hops back onto his feet for another round shortly before the blast, it's likely he would have eventually defeated the Hunter through sheer endurance.
• Mook Horror Show:
  • 9-Torg's ant-like minions experience one via Enemy Chatter. At first they're confident in their strength and boast about it, but within minutes they realize that they're The Goomba and spend the rest of the level alternately terrified of you and resigned to their fate. Happens to them a second time upon your return to the Slums while tracking down Dr. Giblets. They accost you, bragging about how much stronger their new alliance with the G3 has made them, only to panic again upon realizing you're the same person who previously massacred them.
  • The penultimate bounty target, Nipulon, also experiences this as their attempt to drug the Bounty hunter into a psychedelic haze to gain a combat advantage over them instead has them fight off the effects and fight back even harder against them, represented in their drugged-out perspective by them gaining four arms to multi-wield all their Gatliens at once against him and the army of hallucinatory clones standing between them, before violently finishing him with Knifey.
• Morton's Fork: You could fight Douglas normally, or you could kill him early during his act as Dr. Joopy. Unfortunately, Kenny realizes that you still need proof of kill and since Douglas just fell back into the pipes, you'll have to finish the puzzle anyway to get him out. Once you get to his suit, it will activate an emergency autopilot and fight you with a dead Douglas flopping around inside it.
• Mouth of Sauron: A heroic example in the form of the Gatliens in the Bounty Hunter's arsenal, who all readily speak on their behalf in a majority of the game's dialogue prompts.
• My Greatest Failure: Kenny sees himself as responsible for the destruction of Gatlas. His escapades as a smuggler's firearm alerted the G3 Cartel to Gatlas's location, and they wiped the Gatliens off the face of the planet with a bio-engineered Zombie Apocalypse.
• Nice Guy:
  • Gus is rather affable. When you interact with Dr. Joopy, Gus will happily remark that he and the bounty hunter will help Joopy save his family. He figures out that Joopy is Douglas because he paid attention to the names of Joopy's kids.
  • Creature is a cheerful fellow who sees the best in everybody. Even when Kenny reveals that he was responsible for the destruction of Gatlas, he still argues for him that he's worth being forgiven and even calls on a group therapy during the mission against Nipulon for everybody to just talk about Kenny's mistake and come to a peaceful understanding. If he's selected for the Suicide Mission into Garmantuous' ass, he chooses to believe it was because the Bounty Hunter knew he was the only one who could survive it, thanking them for trusting and having faith in him.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The game credits feature a song in the style of Randy Newman. Literally subverted in the final boss when he warps in Jack Black and Susan Sarandon and reduces them into bloody paste.
• No Fourth Wall: The game's characters know that they are in a video game to the point where even outside of He Knows About Timed Hits, they mention the UI.
• No Ontological Inertia: Defied. After making it home, Gene mentions that there are still some G3 thugs that haven't heard about Garmantuous' death and the cartel will take a while to fully dismantel, since news travels slowly across a galaxy-wide network.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: Played With. If the Bounty Hunter shoots Douglas masquerading as 'Dr. Joopy', the game will avert Sequence Breaking and events will proceed exactly as they would as if he were still alive, as the team realizes that they still need to complete the pipe puzzles to deposit the body in a location they can carve a piece of it off, and once the corpse is deposited inside the Powered Armour he'd have otherwise fought you with, it detects his death and proceeds to do his boss fight anyway, with his corpse flopping about inside of it, since the suit was his only combat advantage anyway.
• Overly Long Gag: From the litany of taunts the annoying kid in the slums has to goad you with to the long debate the people tied to the trolley tracks have over which of them you should save from the extremely slow trolley, High on Life is full of jokes stretched out to prodigious lengths.
• Parental Substitute: Gene slowly becomes this, especially towards Lizzie not wanting her to date Tweeg seeing him as a bad influence and expressing great concern for her safety when she runs off with him. Even starts referring to himself as 'Uncle Gene'.
• The Peter Principle: Krubis's position is implied to be rather low, but his being put in charge of a mining operation fits with the "Person with great practical skills is promoted to a managerial position they're not fit for" aspect. During his Boss Fight, he states that he is better suited for killing than the paperwork and such of running the mine.
• Pokémon Speak: The final Gatlien Lezduit is incapable of saying anything other than its name due to the fact that it was revived via shoddy cybernetics except for one instance after killing Garmantuous, where he says "We did it!"
• Psycho Knife Nut: Knifey really likes stabbing people. Unfortunately for him, though, he's just a knife, and while he has a tethering power he has practically no movement capability outside of jumping about like a fish out of water, meaning the Bounty Hunter is able to keep him from attacking anybody they don't want him to attack.
• Punny Name: Lezduit is obtained just before the final mission and can only say his own name. He's saying "Let's do it," referring to destroying the G3 Cartel once and for all. That was also always his name.
• The Quiet One: Ironically, despite his introductory mission portraying him as a Talkative Loon who will not shut up about killing or being used to stab something, as the Bounty Hunter acquires more Gatliens who strike up regular conversations between each other, Knifey falls more and more into this role as the game goes on. When the Bounty Hunter follows Kenny's request to leave the other weapons behind at the house so they can have a private chat, and so Kenny can admit his accidental role in the destruction of Gatlas, they both forget Knifey is still on them until they're rushing back to the house when the G3 assault Blim City, meaning he overheard the whole thing. He assures them that he's not a narc though.
• Rage Breaking Point: After having disguised himself with goop in order to get close to Nipulon, the Bounty Hunter has to walk through a lounge where G3 Aliens are using Humans as drugs; draining their life force from them. As he waits in a booth with another alien talking about how delicious and weak the Humans are, The Bounty Hunters' vision starts to go red as he is visibly shaking with rage. Your gatliens know this as they give you permission to go all out on them.
  Kenny: Yeah, fuck this! Do you what you have to!
  Gus: Okay, le-let's just go for it. Okay, we're behind you on this. We got your back.
  Sweezy: Alright, fuck it. Take them all out.
  Creature: This is awful. I'm so sorry.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Averted for Kenny, who regularly stutters and trips over himself when speaking to people, peppering his speech with lots of "ums" and "uhs".
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • Since the Bounty Hunter isn't infected with Translator Microbes before they rescue Kenny, it's left unclear why exactly Garmantuous had Kenny's prior wielder shot dead on their street shortly after arriving on Earth. Judging by the body language and tone of their alien conversation, it's implied said alien was the one who discovered Earth and alerted the G3 cartel to its coordinates, only for Garmantuous to stiff him on his expected reward by making him a stiff. Regardless, it's never clarified.
  • Prior to fighting Nipulon, the Bounty Hunter and his team take a moment before entering his office to confront him by sitting in the waiting room, the team still expressing their anger against Kenny for his accidental role in exposing Gatlas' existence to the G3 and it's resulting destruction from that. As the tensions continue to mount, Squeezy and Gus eventually make it clear they want to leave the team after this final job with Nipulon, asking if 'that's what everybody wants'. A unnamed, unheard-of-before voice then speaks up seemingly from nowhere, saying that that's what it wants. Whomever it was is never explained, and none of the Gatliens or Helen react to it at all, leaving it unclear who exactly spoke. However, it does slightly foreshadow the Mind Screw the team is about to suffer from fighting Nipulon.
• Sadistic Choice: Buying and using the 'trolly' warp disk from Blorto will warp in a classical Chained to a Railway setup: 6 aliens tied to a railway with a trolley proceeding down a hill towards them, 5 tied to a split in the track leading left, one tied up on the right. With no way to stop the trolley, the only thing the bounty Hunter can do is choose which track the trolley will proceed down before it reaches the split. The lone alien will offer to pay you if you spare him, whilst the other 5 won't be able to pay anything, but switching the track to choose the single alien will have one of the 5 reveal that he's committed genocide in the past and will go on to commit genocide in the future as a celebration of his survival, forcing the Bounty Hunter to decide whether killing him is worth the lives of 4 innocents. The lone alien lampshades that the moral quandary isn't quite so clear-cut as it seemed at first.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Invoked by Knifey, who suggests a Knifey only Any% run, which is actual speedrunning terminology for simply getting to the game's end without any other prerequisites.
• Sequence Breaking: Can be attempted, but ultimately Defied. If the Bounty Hunter listens to Gus or realizes that 'Dr. Joopy' is lying to them because he keeps swapping around the names of his kids, it's entirely possible for them to shoot Douglas whilst he's exposed on the outside of the pipes, mortally wounding him with a single shot and theoretically side-stepping his boss fight. However, his wounded body falls back into the pipes, forcing the team to still deposit his body back into his offices through the pipe puzzles, and once his corpse is deposited into his Powered Armour, it detects his death and enables autopilot mode, enacting his boss fight anyway, but with Douglas' corpse stuck inside a moving suit, since the suit was the real danger in fighting him anyway.
• Sequel Hook: By the end of the game, Garmantuous and his top enforcers are dead, meaning it's only a matter of time before the rest of G3 falls apart, but Dr. Gurgula is still at large, opening up the potential for a sequel, as well as the fact that their use as a recreational drug has not lessened and Earth is still a blighted wasteland after the G3 cartel exploited it, meaning humanity overall is still in a precarious position. There's also the matter of what it is that humans have that other species don't that makes them more valuable to G3 as a drug and whether Knifey is a Gatlien or not.
  • High on Knife addresses some of these plot threads: two years after the events of the main game, humans have become part of the galactic community, Earth is now a protected refuges for both humans and any surviving Gatliens, and Knifey reunites with his own family, a race of living knives.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Gus, the Gatlien retrieved from Krubis. Shooting anything more than a few feet in front of you does minimal damage, if any. Subverted in that he can pull enemies closer to you to take better advantage of his range.
• Shout-Out:
  • Kenny, being aware that you're in a game, compares a section of relatively easy platforming to Super Lucky's Tale.
  • Early on, you have to get past a gate with two doors guarded by a bickering pair of blue and red creatures who are mostly head.
  • An enemy can say there's no Rick and Morty references in the game before immediately apologizing.
  • Douglas's armored suit bears a striking resemblance to the one worn by Psy-Crow, although Douglas himself, being a weak creature who needs the suit to power up, is more like Jim.
  • An elevator sequence has Kenny talk about AKIRA, Evangelion, Code Lyoko, Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 2, and Chrono Trigger.
  • Nipulon directly mentions Psycho Mantis' fourth wall breaking gimmick of reading the console's memory card and switching controller ports. He even points out the inability of doing so with wireless controllers.
  • Entering Movie Theater Warp Disc you can watch the B-Movie, Demon Wind while the RedLetterMedia crew is riffing on it. An entire 90-minute movie.
  • In the DLC, at one point when Suit O gives you advice, he refers to it as "God of War style blatant advice", mocking the advice given in the puzzle sections of Ragnarok.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: While pretty much everyone in the game swears liberally, Knifey still manages to stand out as the most foul-mouthed of the entire cast.
• Space "X": One restaurant you can come across in the game is Space Applebee's.
• Starfish Language: One alien in the hub world has a face shaped like a butt and speaks in noises that sound just like farts. Notably, his friend establishes it is a language and acts as a translator, but the Translator Microbes, which can even translate societal references and such can't make heads or tails of it.
• Stay with Me Until I Die: Parodied; on the path to Dr. Giblets, the bounty hunter comes across a bisected Moplet (voiced by Zach Hadel)bleeding out from the ground, the unfortunate victim of a Telefrag. He will beg the player to stay with him for his final moments. After the Moplet goes limp, the player will attempt to continue on his quest, only for the Moplet to snap back into consciousness and berate the bounty hunter for leaving him. This happens several times, until the bounty hunter decides to Mercy Kill him or he just gives up on the bit.
  Bisected Moplet: Okay, never mind I'm dying now. This one is real. (dies for real)
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: High on Knife begins as a silly adventure in which the Bounty Hunter explores a desert world populated by idiotic slug people... until they head to Muxxalon HQ. Initially, the dark, claustrophobic Womb Level and its associated jumpscares are played completely for horror, although the tone soon shifts to a sillier Horror Comedy.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In the DLC, Kenny is replaced by Hunter, and it's lampshaded by Gene about how lucky they were to find another one of Kenny's sub-species of Gatlian so you have a pistol.
• Take That!: After realizing the pointlessness behind Suit-O's detective mode, Kenny suggests a DLC based on deactivating it permanently that would cost $45 for one hour just to screw with the players.
• Tempting Fate: Multiple times actually. The Bounty Hunter will occasionally be harassed by NPCs who have annoying dialogue, block their path and shove them around, additionally following them around for a while until the Bounty Hunter manages to move far enough away from their first meeting spot. Even if there's sometimes reluctance on behalf of the equipped Gatlien to blast them, with repeated instance its always possible to just shoot these annoyances in the face for harassing an armed and dangerous Bounty Hunter for sometimes petty reasons, with the only thing sparing them being the lengths of said hunter's patience.
• They Would Cut You Up: Creature is subject to this along with many other Gatliens. He is the only one to survive the process and it left him with very unusual properties, such as his Weaponized Offspring and implicitly wiped large swaths of his memory.^note His name is implied to be Appropriated Appelation and he doesn't know who the famous Lezduit is or remember Gatlus
• This Is a Drill: Krubis has a drill on his head and arm, which he primarily uses to move around his arena. When his health bar is down to its last third, he finally puts them to offensive use by charging at you through the walls and ceiling.
• Title Drop: There is a store you have to visit for a bounty called "High On Life".
• Translator Microbes: Directly mentioned by Kenny on your first meeting, as he spits a glob of green slime into the Hunter's face to infect them with the microbes and communicate properly, instructing them on how to remove his inhibitor chip and then use him to secure a way for them and Lizzie off-world before Earth is completely invaded. Beforehand, all alien dialogue is incomprehensible and depicted with alien symbols in the subtitles. They're apparently extremely common amongst space life and highly infectious, as Lizzie also gets infected with them when she gets drenched in blood beating a Mook to death with a baseball bat whilst you and Kenny secure a warp drive from a G3 ship.
• Trade Snark: Exaggerated in the "This TM" ad by advertising a trademarked product that has no physical appearance or even name beyond that.
• Unabashed B-Movie Fan: The player character. Their walls are plastered in B-movie posters, such as Tammy and the T-Rex, which ally Gene later watches as well (but apparently just to ogle Denise Richards).
• Video Game Caring Potential: There is a little alien in the city named Globo who cannot talk and cannot afford to buy the drum he desperately wants. If you get it to him, he will progress in fame while you take bounties. His friend and interpreter will note how it is all thanks to you being willing to help him.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Plenty of it all over the game, all Played for Laughs. Shoot a kid, slaughter an entire family, warp in and destroy a cute little town. All of it is optional, so the only thing stopping you is your patience.
• Weaponised Offspring: Creature uses his children as ammo. He mentions that he's saddened by the fact that they have incredibly short lifespans but at least spawning them feels great (painful, but he is a proud dad).
• Weapons That Suck: On top of serving as the game's shotgun, Gus can bring enemies closer using his vacuum ability.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • The Gatliens will call you out if you try to shoot a friendly NPC.
  • The other Gatliens besides Kenny are not happy with the latter when he admits he's the reason the G3 Cartel found out about Gatlas, leading to their race being nearly wiped out. They are particularly upset because they realized he's only telling them because he wanted to tell them first before Lezduit (whom he had told earlier thinking Lezduit would die) can. They call Kenny out again when he admits he wouldn't have admitted the truth if he knew the revived Lezduit would only be able to say his own name.
• What the Hell, Player?:
  • Played for Laughs if you pause the game after completing the tutorial and getting Kenny, which he'll call you an idiot for thinking the pause button shoots guns.
  • If you let Knifey stab Gene after killing 9-Torg, Gene will curse out the player for listening to the UI. Fortunately for Gene, he's survived worse. Unfortunately for him, though, you get an achievement for the attempt on his life.
• What Were They Selling Again?: The "This TM" ad never really establishes the product being sold (some formless floating thing) or the actual problem it is supposed to resolve (it just is adjacent to several unrelated problems in a kitchen).
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: It's indeed possible to shoot Douglas at any point during one of the pipe puzzles, resulting in him becoming mortally wounded, but the team realizes they still need to complete the puzzle to dump his corpse back in his offices where they can reach it. And even when they finally make it to their destination, Douglas' suit will recognize his death and enable autopilot mode against the Bounty Hunter, resulting in a boss fight with Douglas anyway, just minus some of his Boss Banter.
• Woolseyism: In-Universe. The Translator Microbes the Bounter Hunter and Lizzie are infected with apparently don't always offer an exact one-to-one translation of the alien dialogue and such around them, and will sometimes fill in with a close-enough reference to get their point across, enabling smoother dialogue and communication. Also, Kenny describes the mytes as the equivalent of "fish", not sure if that made sense to the Bounty Hunter.
  Knifey: Do you wanna hear my Christoper Walkin? Hey, I'm walkin' here, this is New York City! Yeah, pretty good, right? Ah, the translator microbes... we're thinking about two different people, but same kind of thing, same kind of idea.
• Would Hurt a Child: Due to the fact that Humans are being exploited as drugs by the G3, it would make sense that Humans of all ages would be used. Even Babies are said to be on the menu with one patron saying that he loved them young and innocent.
• You Are Number 6: The Torg clones are actually named based on their age, with 9-Torg being nine years old. However, since they mature quickly she's considered old by Torg standards.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dr. Gurgula to Clugg in the secret Human Haven laboratory. Once Clugg has given him a supply of humans to experiment on, Dr. Gurgula shoots him in the head for his troubles (and luring the Bounty Hunter to his laboratory).
• Zero-Effort Boss:
  • After killing 9-Torg you can proceed to attack 5-Torg, who is strung up and immobile. Attack her causes a boss health bar to appear at the top of the screen and Kenny congratulates you for killing what is technically an Optional Boss.
  • Can be attempted, but ultimately Subverted with Douglas. Shooting him at any of the pipe puzzles will mortally wound him, but when his body arrives at his offices, his Powered Armour will detect his death and enact autopilot mode to enact his boss fight regardless.
  • After all the effort the Bounty Hunter puts into tracking down Dr. John Giblets, they find him in a backroom behind a sealed door, placing an experiment up on a shelf atop an unstable chair. Noticing their presence startles Giblets so much he falls off the chair, breaking his suit's visor and rapidly suffocating in the atmosphere, complete with his boss health bar draining to nothing in seconds. Kenny lampshades how much of an Anti-Climax Boss he was as they're carving proof of kill off of him.
• Zombie Apocalypse: One of these destroyed Gatlas.

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