The first Sludge Life was a surprising curiosity when it was released for free on the Epic Games Store before becoming a paid title elsewhere. It was extremely brief, but creative and memorable all the same. Sludge Life 2 doesn’t really attempt to do anything majorly different than the first game and, as such, it has most of the same pros and cons. The goal was simply more of the same, albeit with a larger play area and some really out-there aesthetics. Much like the first game, it won’t take you long at all, but it’s still worth a look for anyone that gets a kick out of the grimy, lo-fi sludgy world the game offers.
Sludge Life 2‘s main plot places you back in the role of Ghost, the tagger from the first game. Ghost is now part of the posse of Big Mud, a rapper of some repute. Ahead of a music video shoot in a giant, blue void, Big Mud goes missing and it’s up to Ghost to find out where he went. Once you succeed in finding him and join him in the void, you’ll hit the credits. This can be done in a very short amount of time, of course, but that isn’t the point of the game. There are other endings as well that require more steps and more thorough exploring. Most of the NPCs scattered about the world all have something unique or wacky to say, from a man defending how he lets his dog watch too much TV and smoke, to another sitting within a circle of pigeons and complaining that one is missing. It’s all very zany.
A whole new world
The world isn’t particularly large, but it’s fairly vertical. There’s an entire section high up where a significant amount of the content resides. You’ll climb stairs and make your way down to jump around in the sludge as well. As for things to do, there are five master tapes dotted around that grant access to Big Mud tracks, as well as 100 tags to spray, weird animals to photograph, programs to install on your laptop, and gadgets to collect. You’ll find the hang glider again and the Vandal Eyes that allow you to find tags more easily. One of the more useful items is a warp device that lets you set a return point wherever you stand and freely go back and forth between it, handy for when you’re making tricky jumps.
Sludge Life 2 is once again played in the first-person and has a fairly lo-fi atmosphere. You can turn a VHS filter on and off if you’d prefer things to look cleaner. A returning issue from the first game is that the jumping doesn’t feel all that great. The hang glider also descends so rapidly that its usefulness is diminished and the responsiveness of the double jump provided by a pair of shoes you can find is a bit dubious. None of this is notably detrimental, however. The build I played did have a persistent bug where I lost the ability to interact with everything, but I know it’s being worked on and it should be fixed at launch. The presentation is still engaging and charming in its own way.
Not much, yet enough
The most important aspect of Sludge Life 2 is undeniably the world itself. Everything is unique and finding new locations is one of the main appealing aspects. The very top of the world houses Ciggy Beach, an artificial beach with a pool of water in the middle and a long water slide. You’ll find other memorable spots, such as a large burger shop complete with a massive burger sign, an office for a chemical company and huge stacks of cargo containers. The top portion of the world even has a movie theatre playing a GIF, where an NPC remarks that GIF movie technology is the way of the future. There’s a ton of personality on display no matter where you look and many NPCs will give you interesting responses in exchange for some of the cigarettes you’ll find laying around.
I’d wager that most players will see most of what Sludge Life 2 has to offer in just a couple of hours. After a few, I’d found most things, but a fair amount of content is fairly well hidden, plus I only unlocked a couple of the game’s endings. Despite this, I enjoy the type of handcrafted open-world that’s focused on exploration which this game has to offer. It is engaging to wander around and suss out new details. 10 warp stations can also be located around the map to assist you in getting around, which is once again appreciated. When all is said and done, fans of the first game who simply want more of it will find exactly that. This is another slice of weirdness and there’s not much else that’s quite like it.
Sludge Life 2: Sludge Life 2 doesn't last long or do a lot to innovate on the first game's core, but it's still a trippy exploration game that hits the notes it should. – Andrew Farrell
If you enjoyed our Sludge Life 2 review, check out more:
Nimbus Infinity review – Wrong Turn | Microsoft Flight Simulator Asobo ATR 42/72-600 review
