Creating a critically-acclaimed Television set series is ane affair, simply a video game is an entirely unlike thing.
High On Life comes from the mind of Justin Roiland, one of the comedy duo behind award-winning animated bear witness Rick And Morty - a billion-dollar franchise which just wrapped upwardly its sixth season.
The game places the role player in the position of a bounty hunter who embarks on various missions to eliminate unlike targets in increasingly bizarre, Alice In Wonderland-esque worlds.
A unique aspect to the game is that all four available guns come with talking faces on the dorsum, which face the player and react with unique lines during the playthrough.
Despite his success in a Goggle box writer'south room, Roiland says the nature of games makes them a far bigger challenge.
"Information technology'due south like writing a TV evidence that people tin reach in and knock things effectually," he told Sky News.
"And as a studio, we desire to have lots of fun narrative surprises doing that.
"An encounter with an NPC (not-playable graphic symbol) is different depending on what gun you've got out.
"Every gun has their own complete gear up of dialogue and reactions. You're writing a lot more stuff, essentially."
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High On Life is from the mind of Justin Roiland, creator of Rick And Morty
The studio tasked with bringing Roiland's writing to life is Squanch Games, which he founded in 2016.
Lead designer Erich Meyr elaborated on just how narratively circuitous the game could be.
"You have up to 4 guns and every unmarried one of them had a different line," he told Sky News.
"And so we had to control how wide we could go with information technology to brand sure we could fifty-fifty do information technology."
Given only how much work goes into game development, the idea of artificial intelligence doing some heavy lifting is becoming mightily appealing.
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As advances in AI continue, developers are using it more than frequently in production - including Loftier On Life.
While nigh of the art was hand drawn, Roiland told Heaven News the powerful Midjourney AI, which can paint original pictures based entirely on the user's written prompts, was used to add together some finishing touches to his conflicting worlds.
"Information technology makes the earth feel like a strange alternate universe of our world," he said.
"And we used it to come up upward with weird, funny ideas."
"I don't know what the future holds, but AI is going to be a tool that has the potential to make content creation incredibly accessible," Roiland added.
"I don't know how many years away we are, but all you will need to be is somebody with some big ideas."
Meyr revealed that AI was also used to paradigm some character voices, and ane pocket-sized function made the cut.
The game otherwise features a total cast, including Roiland himself, Curb Your Enthusiasm star JB Smoove, and SpongeBob SquarePants actor Tom Kenny.
The game boasts a goofy sci-fi aesthetic like Roiland'southward other work
While game development is enough dissimilar from Telly product, there is an obvious similarity in the madcap sci-fi aesthetic and tone of High On Life and Rick And Morty.
Roiland, who won an Emmy Laurels in 2018 for his Pickle Rick episode of Rick And Morty, said he had spent his childhood "obsessed with aliens and Area 51 and abductions".
"It affords you the ability to tell so many different types of stories," he told Sky News, "which you potentially wouldn't otherwise exist able to tell.
"Even some newer ideas I have, they're all sci-fi related."
Among those ideas are some Uk projects, though Roiland was tight-lipped on the details.
In the meantime, High On Life is available at present on Xbox Game Pass, or for individual purchase on Xbox Series X and South, and PC.
