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 objects readily available was a custom-designed skateboard deck with art work created by the wonderful artists at Squanch Video games that some had been fortunate sufficient to take residence.

The mix 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 realized extra about how this collaboration took place. He tells me they began by drawing upon inspiration from the colourful, daring aesthetics that outline each the sport and skate tradition. A kind of on the workforce who helped hone that course of included Chief Artistic Officer and Artistic Director Mikey Spano, whose ardour for the ‘90s period shone by way of 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 colour. It’s chaotic in one of the best ways: Playful, gross, and enjoyable. It’s much less about one character and extra in regards to the general vibe, vibrant colour, slime, goo, aliens, and that robust ’90s power. That tone anchors the whole lot.”

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

To assist bridge the hole between the sport’s distinctive visible fashion and conventional skate deck aesthetics, Mohlman’s workforce collaborated with artists like Skinner and Lurk, who had additionally contributed graffiti and murals inside the sport. “Our idea workforce explored a ton of enjoyable, off-the-wall concepts,” Mohlman says. “It wasn’t overthought — it was about power and influence. 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 might stand out each in-game and in skateparks. What began as a inexperienced, three-eyed alien dripping in slime advanced 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 easy: Does it look cool? Sure? Nice. Make it clear, print-ready, and ship it. Squanch offers artists lots of artistic freedom — that’s a part of why the work feels genuine,” Mohlman tells me. “Hopefully followers join with it the way in which we did, whether or not it finally ends up on a wall or will get dropped right into a bowl and worn down the way in which it must be.”

Excessive On Life 2 x ID@Xbox Skate Deck Giveaway

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

Beginning right this moment, March 17, 2026, and operating by way of 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 mates within the feedback who have to play (or have performed) Excessive On Life 2. That’s it!

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

Excessive On Life 2 is offered right this moment for Xbox Collection X|S, Xbox on PC, and with Sport Move Final with assist for Xbox Play Anyplace.