The game follows the Bounty Hunter and their Gatlien allies after they defeated the G3 alien drug cartel from the first game, who is currently living the high life. They brought humanity back from the brink of extinction and hunted dangerous bounties to the far corners of the galaxy. Needless to say, life's going pretty good for the Bounty Hunter... up until a mysterious figure from their past reappears and puts a price on their sister Lizzie's head. And to make things more complicated, the Rhea Pharmaceutical company is plotting to turn the human race into pills. So you know what that means?
It's time for the Bounty Hunter to kick ass, save their sister, stop the human race from being turned into drugs (again), and take down the evil that is big pharma!
The game released on Febuary 13th, 2026 and can be purchased here.
Previews: Reveal Trailer, Launch Trailer
Tropes present in High on Life 2:
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Inverted. According to an exhibit in the human zoo, aliens consider Tammy and the T-Rex and The Zone of Interest to be some of the dumbest movies ever filmed. On the other hand, Bowie seems to really appreciate Jar Jar Binks and wishes he was real.
- Aliens Are Bastards: The Rhea Pharmaceutical company is planning to turn the human race into pills, so this is a given.
- Aliens in Cardiff: One mission has the protagonist rescue their father from a cult in Wyoming.
- An Arm and a Leg: Nipulon saws the Outlaw's arms off.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": One of the new Gatliens you can get is Bowie - a Gatlien shaped like a bow and arrow.
- A Truce While We Gawk: In Pinkline Harbour the Buttons Gluttons gang will attempt this when Gessie emerges from the ocean, they'll be upset if you choose not to honor the request.
- Bag of Spilling: Some of the Gatliens went their separate ways over the years; Creature managed to birth some kids who didn't immediately explode, Harper partnered up with Lizzie, and Lezduit... got together with the Bounty Hunter's mom. When the Bounty Hunter betrays the Bounty Hunter Code to save Lizzie, their suit's anti-traitor protocols lock the servos up and force the now-Outlaw to leave their suit behind for an older military model.
- Baritone of Strength: Sheath is a Bounty Hunter turned weapon who also happens to be voiced by Ralph Ineson, with Suit-O making a point to brag about how Sheath's voice is a complete opposite to his own.
- Battle Couple: One of the new weapons are Travis and Jan, who are dual SMG Gatliens who are in a rocky marriage.
- Birds of a Feather: It takes them awhile to get along, but Knifey quickly gets to making Vitriolic Best Buds with Sheath, who's just as crazy about killing as he is.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: After defeating Sheath, mortally wounding him, and getting trapped you decide to work together to kill Muppy Doo, conveniently, a combination of Sheath's species biology and him having a weapon with the right technology for just such an emergency allows you to merge him with his gun to create an upgraded version, the process involves cutting out one of his organs and stuffing it in some kind of gun magazine like device, pumping some green ooze from an implant on his body into a tank on the gun, cutting off his still living head and attaching it to the gun and connecting some wires between the two.
- Celebrity Endorsement: One of your targets, Broncin Bucko is an alien movie star who endorses Rhea Pharmaceutical products, after you kill him it turns out that he's actually one of a pair of Conjoined Twins and that his brother Pete is a brilliant lawyer opposed to the legalization of humans as drugs, he agrees to help with the court case. Sparing Broncin Bucko, who turns out to be Token Good Teammate, has him undergo a Heel–Face Turn and helps his brother expose Rhea Pharma at court.
- Corrupt Politician: One antagonist from the demo is Muppy Doo, a corrupt senator who's in the pocket of Rhea Pharmaceutical.
- Cool Board: Previews show that one of the new gameplay additions is a skateboard that the player can use to maneuver around the world, complete with convenient ramps.
- Criminal Convention: While chasing Senator Muppy Doo, the bounty hunter has to go through Murder Con, a convention based around fighting to the death.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Invoked trope. Rhea Pharmaceuticals' CEO complains that they tried to collude with the G3 Cartel to legitimize their supply; why sell humans as smokable drugs on a black market where everyone wants you dead, when you can legally sell their nutrient-rich bodies as anti-depressants and make even more aliens happier and healthier for even bigger profits? Garmantuous thought it would never work - because it involved convincing the entire galaxy to view humanity as non-sapient livestock. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Supreme Space Court is pretty fucking stupid and nearly legalizes the genocide.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Beating Sheath has you preform Meat Grinder Surgery on him to turn him into an artificial Gatlien.
- Eldritch Location: The inside of Gessie's stomach, apparently Gessie is enough of an Animalistic Abomination to be able allow ghosts to manifest by her mere presence.
- Equippable Ally: Gus, Sweezy, Knifey, and Creature all return from the first game. The Bounty will also come across some more talking guns as well; such as Sheath (a mercenary that gets turned into an assault rifle), Jan and Travis (a pair of dual-wielded pistols), and Bowie (a bow).
- Even Evil Has Standards: Reptical admits that Rhea Pharmaceuticals turning humans into pills is "kind of fucked up" and ultimately halts his fight with the Bounty Hunter after finding out that they were only trying to save their kind from being harvested for corporate profit.
- Expy:
- The mission to kill Senator Muppy Doo takes place on the planet Con Con, a planet entirely consisting of nonstop conventions, bringing to mind Conventia. To enforce the reference further the convention the player initially winds up at is themed around parking, not unlike the planet Blorch from the same show.
- Brutus' design is very blatantly based off of Pyramid Head, to the extent that SuitO outright refers to his helmet as copyright infringement.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: A convention of human enthusiast aliens is outright compared to Earth's furry enthusiasts.
- Flunky Boss: Muppy Doo isn't a fighter, but he has survived multiple assassination attempts and prepared accordingly. During his boss fight, he summons waves of bodyguards while using his shrinking technology and slippery movement to evade your weapons fire.
- Foil: Rhea Pharmaceuticals has the same M.O. as the G3 from last game - trying to turn humans into drugs. But the G3 tried to turn them into illegal drugs to smoke and only see them as product. Rhea's trying to turn them into legal drugs through pills, and they believe it's for their own good seeing them as unfit for the universe rather than just wanting to. Becomes subverted when it turns out that the CEO of Rhea Pharmaceuticals is Nipulon, who survived his injuries from the last confrontation with the bounty hunter. He even lampshades how thanks to his propaganda campaign he can now sell humans as drugs legally for more than he ever did as a cartel boss.
- Gainax Ending: One of the secret endings reveals the events of the game were actually nothing more than an elaborate escape room.
- Heel Realization: Early in the story a bounty hunter comes after you and Lizzie, only to come to the realization that he's being the bad guy while fighting you in Rhea Pharmacuetcals' secret human experimentation lab. He runs a store in Pinkline Harbor and invites you to buy some upgrades.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: During the final boss battle, Niplon tries to poison you with Humanzepro, first with some pills and then by synthesizing some special Humanzepro made from your severed limbs. It goes horribly wrong and transforms you into a mutant, who proceeds to rip Nipulon apart.
- History Repeats: Once again, a large alien company is trying to turn humans into drugs. This also leads to Nipulon's death, as he once again tries to drug the Bounty Hunter to demoralize them only for it to backfire in his face.
- Jury and Witness Tampering: Rhea Pharmaceuticals bribed the Supreme Space Court to give them an automatic win. Unfortunately for them, the SSC decides to pocket the money and still give humanity a fair-ish trial. As the judge puts it, "corruption goes both ways".
- Locked Room Mystery: Larry Pinkstock decides to go out with a bang, by turning his final murder mystery party into a quest to solve his real-life murder; he invites the five people he expected to murder him to his private yacht, gives them a gun, and turns out the lights while he waits to be shot. The six main suspects are you, a former general, a buxom opera star, an inbred royal brat, a mink-encrusted feeble hag, and the Gatlien who claims they were forced to be used as the murder weapon. The catch is, if the guests can't deduce what the infrared security cameras saw in a single guess... well, the room's security systems are AI-controlled. It turns out Pinkstock re-invented cloning so he could fake his death and see the look on his clone's murderer's face. (It's the opera star.) And then the trope is subverted when Buttons, an eco-terrorist bounty hunter, murders the real Pinkstock with a chain-yank from the outside and destroys his yacht; Buttons was aiming for the bounty on you, but doesn't like how Pinkstock and his rich ilk used a majestic leviathan as a work horse.
- Mind Screw: Twilly's No Escape. Each escape room is unoriginal and the puzzles are simple... but everything surrounding the rooms grows increasingly disturbing. After the first escape room, Twilly blocks the entrance to the building with a wall to force you to play another game. After the second escape room, the wall is removed - only for the exit to lead straight into another Twilly's. After the third escape room, you're locked in a room with Twilly, who claims they're an ancient god making escape rooms because they're bored, and then the room spontaneously shifts into a janitor's closet. If you sign up for Twilly's newsletter, at the end of the game the Ankh key used in Twilly's escape rooms will appear on the floor, the whole world will turn into a set of escape rooms and your family turns into cardboard cutouts. After you wake up, Gene laughs about how you were chanting "Twilly" in your sleep. Apparently, it was All Just a Dream... but why is Suit-O nervously claiming they didn't have the exact same dream, and that AIs aren't supposed to have dreams which they definitely didn't have?
- Mundane Made Awesome: Con Con has a convention for parking, and it's a variable warzone down there, apparently the various conventions are just that popular.
- Multiple Endings: Besides the canonical and secret endings, there are two downer endings.
- The Bounty Hunter is forced to kill Lizzie instead of breaking the bounty hunter code to save her. This results in the Bounty Hunter and their family attending Lizzie's funeral while Rhea Pharma legalizes human-based drugs.
- The Bounty Hunter tries to stop Rhea Pharma via paperwork, but turns out to be All for Nothing as trial deadline is shorter than the length of time it takes for the paperwork to be reviewed by authority figures. Rhea Pharma succeeds in legalizing human-based drugs and the Bounty Hunter is sent to jail.
- No Fourth Wall: Just like the first game, the characters constantly break the fourth wall and are aware that they are in a video game. Hell, the Muppy Doo boss fight has him infiltrate the pause menu and the player has to fight him there.
- Not Quite Dead: The mastermind behind Rhea Pharmaceuticals turns out to be Nipulon, one of the G3 Cartel members you fought in the last game.
- Exaggerated with one of the bosses, human cult leader Gwendolyn Birch. Turns out a human taking a drug made out of humans doesn't just mutate you into an abomination, it makes you borderline indestructible: even after three combat phases and getting shot by Lezduit, the news report you get while you're escaping implies that she's still alive and rampaging across Wyoming.
- Palm Tree Panic: One level is Pinkline Harbour, a beach resort area where you have to get aboard a cruise ship where your target is.
- Predatory Big Pharma: Parodied with the main antagonist of the game, Rhea Pharmaceutical, which is literally trying to turn the human race into pills.
- Retro Universe: The game has a "1980's in space" vibe to it, the players hideout is an old, abandoned video arcade, the Hub World of Circuit Arcadia has a shopping mall and the player rides a hoverboard.
- The Reveal: The real reason why wimpy, moronic humans are so 'special' to the galactic community: They're passive psychics. Their 'brains' are actually transceivers to pocket dimensions for their real brains, which are about three to four times larger than the galactic average brain size. Dr. Gurgula was trying to find a biological means of replicating this power into a brain multiplier for other aliens, which would have made them demigods. Also, when humans smoke each other, they turn into nigh-unkillable Eldritch Abominations.
- Shaming the Mob: While hunting James Stevenson, you come across a Gatlien named Bowie who has been scheduled to hang for stealing from your target. To save him, you can convince a few overzealous members of the crowd into realizing what they're doing; one of them discovers the rest of the galaxy has court systems, another realizes that enjoying the execution of an endangered species is Spacist, and the third loses her bloodlust for executions when Sheath and Knifey show her how close she is to becoming a murderhobo like them.
- Shout-Out: At Murder Con the bounty hunter ends up having to fight in a deathmatch to get through and continue chasing Muppy Doo, the deathmatch champ has a "Triangle Head" helmet during his first phase (with colorful stickers), Suit-O even worries if this is too close to the original inspiration and violates its copyright.
- Sizeshifter: One of the antagonists, Senator Muppy Doo, has the ability to shrink and can resize his shrunken bodyguards from his fanny pack. You take Muppy Doo's technology and can use it to carry your secret weapon Jeppy around.
- Take That!: The Supreme Space Court is even dumber than they are corruptible, with a Judge who doesn't know what they're doing half the time, a court system that acts like a sports game, and a general disrespect for any actual laws whatsoever. Rhea Pharmaceuticals' CEO is visibly baffled at the stupidity.
- Too Dumb to Live: Senator Muppy Doo stays way ahead of you during the chase in the demo, then he makes the stupid decision to flee through a convention of human enthusiast aliens, since his stance on turning humans into drugs is so well known (your original plan was to assassinate him during a speech on the subject at Politics Con before Sheath and you ended up interfering with each others attempts to assassinate him, letting him get away) the crowd recognizes him and gets angry blocking his escape and letting you catch up.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Lizzie has been working as an Eco-Terrorist dismantling human trafficking organizations in-between games and is tagging along with Gene and the Bounty Hunter on their adventure this time, with Harper as her weapon.
- The Bounty Hunters mom gets in on this, as during Tiffany's second encounter and the mission to rescue your dad from a cult, she comes along and brings Lezduit as means of defense.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: While trying to repair your suit due to Muppy Doo's hack, you play Bible Adventures. Not a parody of the game, but the full, genuine game. Thankfully, you're not expected to be good at the game, as Knifey soon reccomends the Bounty Hunter just stab themselves in the face to catch Muppy Doo.
- You Just Ruined the Shot: In the tutorial mission, you're given a bounty to hunt down a Kaiju terrorizing a city... except it was actually a big-budget movie production and you just killed a trained beast. You end up raising your hands in either guilt or frustration.
- Zero-Effort Boss: Nipulon's secretary, Helen, decides she doesn't want to sit back and watch her boss get mutilated again, so she pulls a knife on you. Before she can do anything, Gene crashes a ship through the office, knocking her out.