High on Life Got Delayed As Devs Didn't Want to Compete with Major Releases

In August, it was revealed that Squanch Games's upcoming comedic biopunk first-person shooter, High on Life, has been delayed from its previously planned October 25 release date to December 13. At the time, the developer attributed the postponement to the fact that the studio wants to "polish the best possible gaming experience", and now it has shared more details on why this decision was made.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, High on Life chief creative officer and art director Mikey Spano shared that the studio decided to push the release to December partly due to the big number of major releases from other studios, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and God of War Ragnarök, that take part around the same time.

"October's crowded – it's really crowded," Spano said. "For us, the benefit is the conversation. So if we're missing out on the conversation, because everybody's talking about God of War or Call of Duty, that's a missed opportunity for us."

Spano also noted that, as the studio previously said, the game also needed to be polished. He explained that initially, the studio planned to make Act One and Act Three "really polished and great", while Act Two would have been great as well but "not quite as good" as the first and the third parts of the game. 

However, later, according to Spano, Squanch Games realized that they'd like to bring all parts of the game to a high-quality level, so the delay gave developers some time to enhance the title.

"As we started to see how good Act One was, we were like, 'oh shit, wouldn't it be great if we could get everything out to this quality level?" Spano shared. "[The delay] gave us a little bit of extra that we needed. And it got us out of the way of some of those bigger titles."

High on Life was first revealed during the Xbox and Bethesda showcase in June. The game is being developed at Squanch Games which was co-founded by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and Tanya Watson, a former executive producer at Epic Games.

The title is scheduled for release on December 13 and will be available for Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

You can find the original interview with Mikey Spano here. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.