There's a bug in recently-released comedy shooter High on Life that traps players inside an outer space version of the restaurant Applebees. High on Life, from Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland's Squanch Games, is a crude, wacky, over-the-top zany riot of color and sound that either delights or annoys you depending on your personal tolerance for that which is wacky and/or zany.
In a moment which I know is a bug but that feels extremely on-brand, players seem to keep getting trapped inside the Space Applebees. How do I know it's a bug? The only way to get past this is to... start the game over. Starting from checkpoint does nothing for you, here. Space Applebees has devoured your game and you cannot have it back.
The bug reports started just after release, but they're honestly... pretty hilarious. "Hope y'all can fix the space Applebees glitch getting stuck when the sister leaves with the BF," said someone to the developers on Twitter. I too spiral into depression when my sister leaves with her new boyfriend and do not want to exit the Applebees. Game is realistic, 10/10, etc.
Applebees, if you don't know, is an American chain restaurant which is a fixture of strip malls and highway exits. It serves a lot of food and drinks that are very bad for you. It is the kind of place you might go out to eat with people you don't like very much but who you like enough to go out to dinner with, which is probably the kind of sentence that says more about my own personal prejudices than it does about Applebees. No shade upon Applebees-enjoyers.
"High on Life glitch. Stuck inside Space Applebee's," says a Reddit post.
high_on_life_glitch_stuck_inside_space_applebees from r/highonlifegame
I've reached out to Squanch games for comment, but if I'm being honest, don't expect one here over the holiday season.
High on Life is pretty predictably a huge hit with its target audience and a general failure with critics. Our Rick Lane called it a "yammering mess of mediocrity" in his particularly savage 40/100 PC Gamer review. Morgan Park, however, much more a fan of this style of humor, said it'd already won him over by the Gamescom trailer.
Either way, if I'm being very honest, I can forgive a lot of any game that includes a full-on 90 minute movie for no reason at all. Actually, you can watch two.
Bless you Claire at Kotaku for drawing my attention to this glitch. File Under: Headlines I never thought I'd write. Screenshot below relevant.
