When Sludge Life debuted in 2020, it was the most effortlessly cool video game I had ever played. It shouldn’t be a surprise considering it comes from the mind of one of the most effortlessly cool creators in the game industry – musical mastermind Doseone. His love for modern street culture and history with the nostalgic world of teenage-wasteland graffiti bliss smash together like two bullets colliding in slo-mo to create the world of Sludge Life. It’s an aimless first-person adventure about exploring a sub-urban scrawl, tagging empty walls, taking pictures of cats with two buttholes, and piecing together the story of a sludge-filled town living with, against, and in spite of capitalism. Now it’s getting a sequel, and after spending an hour with the new demo, Sludge Life 2 isn’t a massive reinvention – it’s more Sludge Life, and that’s exactly what I’ve been craving since I beat the original.
You once again play as Ghost, a silent and well-known graffiti tagger chilling in the sludge-filled slums. This time around, though, you’re moving up in the world and acting as the manager for infamous underground rapper Big Mud, but Big Mud is missing after a wild night of partying, and your major goal is to find him. Part of the urgency is that he’s one of your closest friends, but another part of it is that he’s got a big promo to record for Ciggys, a cigarette brand that’s seen all over the place in the first game. You get most of this detail from your buddy hanging out on the balcony when you start the game, but there are no quest markers or cutscenes or mini-maps. Once you talk to him, you’re free to see whatever you want and go wherever you want – so I did.
Sludge Life 2 isn’t quite a walking simulator or an open-world game. It’s full of characters and creatures, but they don’t walk around like Skyrim NPCs – everyone stays where they are, has something to say, and maybe even something to give you. Characters still seem to live and breath and do things, though. I ran around the Ciggy suites and found a mascot on smoke break, a pigeon making out with a snoring fast-food fan, and a couple burger-shop employees making out in the back of the store while a customer has been waiting for his meal so long he grew a beard.
I also learned more about the story, which is my favorite part of the game. As you talk to characters and observe your environment, you piece together not just the big picture, but the smaller stories threading together within it. This is not the island from the first game. It looks like it at first, but the sludge ocean is gone, and the sky is a strange orange-tint. I jumped off a balcony and instead of falling into a neon abyss, I fell through a crack and landed in sludge – our new island is just a Ciggy-themed paradise encased inside of a giant balloon, and the true sludge suburbia stretches out endlessly beneath it.
Back inside the Ciggy island, the smaller pictures come together to fill this idea in. Ciggy’s newest ad campaign aims to market their product to kids, and Big Mud is the face of it all across billboards and even with a new Ciggy commercial song. While some people have become new Big Mud fans or think it’s rad that he’s chasing the bag and got his paycheck, others look down on another community artist going corporate. Capitalism is clawing into this world at multiple levels, and with Big Mud being at the center of it all, the stakes are more personal now than they ever were in the first game.
I saw a lot in my sixty minutes with the game, but still feel like I only scratched the surface. I got an upgraded teleporter that lets me warp around conveniently, some banned sneakers that let me sprint and double jump, and I even met a talking cat working for the cops who begged me not to snitch him out to the other cats. Oh, and then there was the sludge cult, the talking severed head, a graffiti tagger named Slug, and about a dozen other things. There’s life in every corner of this game, and I’m already dying to see all of it. Sludge Life was the kind of game that we desperately need more of, and Sludge Life 2 is shaping up to be so, so much more.
The Sludge Life 2 is coming soon, but let’s not forget about the original game, either! Alongside this announcement, the first Sludge Life is free to download and keep until 30th March.
