Rick & Morty creator's new game stars a knife that wants to eat someone's ass

High on Life, an FPS from Rick & Morthy co-creator Justin Roiland, predictably looks to be a new member of the "never shutting up" game club. The cartoony shooter includes a gun that constantly talks to you (Roiland, whose voice is instantly familiar) and a knife that is absolutely giddy to do a murder (also Roiland, doing a decent imitation of a deranged Taika Waititi). The knife also doubles as a grappling hook, which is a neat bit of mobility, though its bloodthirsty schtick may get old after about five minutes.

High on Life showed off a single uninterrupted boss fight during Gamescom's Opening Night Live. Here's a curse-filled transcription of everything the knife had to say during that fight: 

"Hey, I'm still here, you can still use me if you want. I can deflect attacks, did you know that? It's not just all about stabbing. Well, I'm mostly all about stabbing and tethering, but I can also deflect attacks."

"I'll slice them to fucking death. I'll cut their fucking heads off and I'll fucking rip their fucking limbs off, do everything. Oh I'm gonna fucking cut right into them, I'll cut their fucking asshole off and eat it." 

"Bet you're just as nice and squishy on the inside as the rest of them."

There's also lots of banter between your gun and the boss you're fighting, which doesn't stretch much further than the repartee of: 

🔫 "You're gross" 

👩 "Fuck you" 

The knife's foul mouth is inexplicably censored in the trailer above, but it was gleefully unbeeped during the Opening Night Life stream. Maybe High on Life's voice actors are working overtime in this boss fight because it's early in the game and it's our first introduction to their personalities, but if this level of banter keeps up through the whole game, I think it's going to be a bit much. The shooting also doesn't look too hot: the boss takes a lot of shots and doesn't really react much to being hit. Maybe the fact that you're saving the galaxy or whatever with a pea shooter is part of the joke. 

High on Life is hitting Steam and the Epic Games Store in December.

Catch up with our full list of Gamescom announcements from Opening Night Live and check our Gamescom schedule to find out when to watch everything else.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).