Squanch Games has confirmed that the Nintendo Switch 2 version of High on Life 2 will not be arriving alongside other platforms, citing the team’s desire to meet “high standards for gaming” before putting the port out. It is a familiar delay justification, but that does not make it wrong.
High on Life was one of the genuine surprises of 2022. It arrived on Game Pass without enormous fanfare, and the response split roughly down the middle: people who found Justin Roiland’s improvised, fourth-wall-breaking comedy style genuinely funny got a game that felt unlike anything else on the market. People who did not find it funny got a mechanically middling first-person shooter with talking guns that would not stop talking. Reviews were mixed. Word of mouth was polarised. It did well regardless, largely because Game Pass removed the financial risk of trying something you might hate.
The sequel carries the same creative fingerprints and presumably the same risk. Not everyone will be on board, and that is fine. What matters is whether the people who loved the first game are willing to come back, and whether Squanch Games has built on what worked rather than simply doing more of the same.
As for the Switch 2 delay specifically, it is worth looking at this in the context of third-party support for Nintendo’s new console more broadly. The Switch 2 launched with strong first-party software, but third-party publishers have been cautious. The original Switch’s performance limitations meant ports required significant optimisation work, and some studios simply chose not to bother. The Switch 2’s improved hardware makes porting easier in theory, but the calculus around whether the audience size justifies the development cost has not fundamentally changed.
A delay is preferable to a broken port, which the Switch original era had plenty of. If Squanch Games is taking the time to do it properly, that is respectable. Whether there is a meaningful Switch 2 audience waiting for High on Life 2 is a separate question entirely.
