Designing the Excessive On Life 2 Skate Deck: Mixing Alien Power with Skate Tradition

Final week at GDC, Xbox hosted its annual ID@Xbox Showcase, which featured a handful of fantastic upcoming indie video games. For these in attendance, one of many distinctive gadgets available was a custom-designed skateboard deck with art work created by the superb artists at Squanch Video games that some had been fortunate sufficient to take dwelling.

The mixture of parts right here makes whole sense for those who’ve had an opportunity to play Excessive On Life 2, which introduces skateboarding to its wild first-person shooter intergalactic journey. In speaking with Squanch Video games Artwork Supervisor Justin Mohlman, I discovered extra about how this collaboration happened. He tells me they began by drawing upon inspiration from the colourful, daring aesthetics that outline each the sport and skate tradition. A type of on the staff who helped hone that course of included Chief Artistic Officer and Artistic Director Mikey Spano, whose ardour for the ‘90s period shone via within the design.

“Excessive On Life 2 is vibrant, loud, bizarre, and unapologetic — wizards, lasers, aliens, slime; it’s all in there,” Mohlman explains. “For this deck, we centered on alien power and dripping slime with daring, saturated coloration. It’s chaotic in one of the simplest ways: Playful, gross, and enjoyable. It’s much less about one character and extra in regards to the general vibe, vibrant coloration, slime, goo, aliens, and that robust ’90s power. That tone anchors every thing.”

Skateboarding tradition performed an enormous position in serving to form the decks’ aesthetic as effectively. As Mohlman notes, skate tradition has at all times embraced rad artwork — decks, graphics, tees, stickers, and graffiti all function expressive designs. “Go to any skatepark and also you’ll see tagging and expressive artwork in all places. We needed one thing that felt prefer it belonged in that world: bizarre, barely gross, easy however hanging. One thing that makes you go, ‘Yep, I would like that one.’”

To assist bridge the hole between the sport’s distinctive visible type and conventional skate deck aesthetics, Mohlman’s staff collaborated with artists like Skinner and Lurk, who had additionally contributed graffiti and murals inside the sport. “Our idea staff explored a ton of enjoyable, off-the-wall concepts,” Mohlman says. “It wasn’t overthought — it was about power and affect. The three-eyed alien in slime grew to become the anchor as a result of it translated cleanly to a vertical deck format and nonetheless felt daring.”

That central motif, of the three-eyed alien design surrounded by slime, additionally translated completely to the vertical deck format, offering a daring anchor that unified the design and ensured it will stand out each in-game and in skateparks. What began as a inexperienced, three-eyed alien dripping in slime developed additional as soon as idea artist Jeremy Fenske labored the Xbox “X” into every eye and pushed the colour variations additional.

“Our course of is fairly simple: Does it look cool? Sure? Nice. Make it clear, print-ready, and ship it. Squanch offers artists numerous inventive freedom — that’s a part of why the work feels genuine,” Mohlman tells me. “Hopefully followers join with it the best way we did, whether or not it finally ends up on a wall or will get dropped right into a bowl and worn down the best way it ought to be.”

Excessive On Life 2 x ID@Xbox Skate Deck Giveaway

Now that you just’ve discovered about its creation, we’re excited to share that Squanch Video games is holding a limited-timed giveaway on your probability to win one in all these custom-designed skate decks.

Beginning as we speak, March 17, 2026, and working via to 11:59pm PT on March 23, 2026, go to the Excessive On Life Instagram web page, comply with @highonlifegame and @Xbox on Instagram, and tag pals within the feedback who have to play (or have performed) Excessive On Life 2. That’s it!

That is restricted to residents in america solely and winners can be chosen at random and can be contacted instantly from the Excessive On Life Instagram account. Be taught extra in regards to the giveaway entry guidelines right here. Good luck!

Excessive On Life 2 is on the market as we speak for Xbox Sequence X|S, Xbox on PC, and with Recreation Cross Final with assist for Xbox Play Wherever.

Excessive On Life 2

Squanch Video games, Inc.

☆☆☆☆☆
1632

★★★★★

$59.99

$53.99

PC Recreation Cross

Xbox Recreation Cross

You’ve carried out it. You’ve taken down an intergalactic cartel, introduced humanity again from the brink of extinction, and hunted harmful bounties to the far corners of the galaxy. Bounty searching has introduced you fortune, fame and love; however when a mysterious determine out of your previous reappears and places a value in your sister’s head, your soft life will get thrown into chaos.

Do you’ve what it takes to threat all of it and produce down an intergalactic conspiracy that when once more threatens your favourite species (people)?

Excessive On Life RETURNS as you and your loved one rag-tag staff of alien misfits shoot, stab, and skate your means via attractive, harmful worlds all throughout the galaxy to explode the EVIL pharmaceutical conglomerate hell-bent on placing value tags on HUMAN LIFE!