In a teetering apartment tower owned by a cigarette company, a man meditates in his room while surrounded by pigeons. A movie theater down the hall shows a violent, five-second gif on eternal loop. 

Inside the headquarters of a one-eyed police force floating on a lake of sludge, a cat begs you not to tell anyone you found them working for the cops.

The world of Sludge Life 2 is packed with vivid, absurd tableaus, but it stops just short of feeling alive.

The original Sludge Life gained plenty of fans when it was available for free on the Epic Games Store for an entire year. The cranky, bizarre walking sim sets you loose to tag up a storm as a graffiti artist named Ghost. 

Not that it had much of a story, but Sludge Life 2 picks up after the events of the first game, when Ghost has become the manager for rapper Big Mud — in other words, you’ve sold out. 

Aside from that light dusting of narrative and a new setting to explore, Sludge Life 2 is functionally identical to its predecessor, for better or worse. On release, Sludge Life felt like a breath of fresh (actually horribly polluted) air. 

Being free certainly helped its reputation, but economics aside, its nonlinear, stress-free design and crass sense of humor made it stand out in a sea of repetitive paint-by-numbers open-world games. The point was just to wander around the smallish open world, taking in the sights of its ongoing ecological collapse and throwing up as much graffiti as you can.

Sludge Life 2 is exactly the same. This time, you wake up in Ciggy City Suites, a dysfunctional apartment complex littered with cigarette ads, and set out to find Big Mud, who’s disappeared after an all-night bender. 

Outside of the superficial differences, though, it might as well be the original game. It’s still focused on tagging every surface you can while gawking at the world crumbling around you. It’s still just as loosely structured, without a nagging quest log in sight to distract you.

Somehow, though, it doesn’t feel as fresh this time. That’s partly because, if you’ve played the original Sludge Life, you’ve done this all before. Whatever the charms of Sludge Life 2, it’s unavoidably retreading familiar ground. 

But there’s more to it than that. After all, the biggest appeal of Sludge Life was the density of its wild sight gags, one stacked on top of another to form an overwhelming collage of satire and fart jokes. In theory, then, piling on new jokes for Sludge Life 2 should be enough, but it just never hit the same highs for me as the original.

That’s not because Sludge Life 2 has lost its edge. There were still plenty of moments that made me laugh out loud or just stare in awe at its sheer, bold strangeness. 

Walking the halls of the Ciggy City Suites and the surrounding sludge pit can be a blast. What other game lets you watch a competitive smoking tournament, befriend a fellow tagger with the head of a bird, or be launched airborne after eating a psychedelic mushroom you found on the ground?

The problem isn’t so much what you’ll find in Sludge Life 2, but what you won’t. The first game had a subtle but clear satiric undertone, a sneering defiance of the corporate hellscape that made up its world. 

That anarchic spirit feels missing from the sequel, leaving just the sneering intact. Advertisements for children’s cigarettes dot the apartment complex, and your old acquaintances drag you for selling out, but Sludge Life 2 doesn’t have much to say. It’s just as happy to make fun of the cluelessness of protestors as it is to mock the cops they’re protesting. 

The stillness of Sludge Life 2 is a paradox and a mixed blessing. You can’t really do anything to affect the world, outside of designated tagging spots. 

The world exists without you, and you’re free to explore whichever of its dark corners call to you in a given moment. That’s a huge contrast with the wildly agile Ghost, who explores the world with immense speed, a double jump, and a handy hang glider. 

Compared to the static world around you, Ghost feels free and alive in a way that no one else can even approach.

But while Sludge Life 2’s trapped-in-amber quality ramps up the silliness of its visual jokes and the untouchable energy of Ghost, it also dulls its emotional impact. A lesser game would find some way for Ghost to save or at least significantly improve the world. 

Sludge Life 2 wisely avoids the savior complex present in so many games, but it swings too far in the other direction. The world isn’t just still; it’s inert. 

There’s no hope for the world you’re frantically spray-painting your name on, but there’s no despair either. Life just sucks, and that’s all there is to it, so here, enjoy these gags about eating stork buttholes.

Sludge Life 2 doesn’t seem to have much to say, and I get the impression that the game itself would call me a nerd for even wanting it to. No matter how funny much of its world is (and it’s often very funny!), it starts to feel like a particularly good bit of bathroom stall graffiti when there’s not much deeper under the surface. 

All that being said, Sludge Life 2 may be worth exploring if you know what you’re getting into. Its grimy, VHS-filtered art is still gorgeous, and its soundtrack is packed with excellent tracks from Doseone, who also scored the original.

If you liked zipping through the dying world of Sludge Life and just want more of its chaotic sense of humor, you’ll find that here. By the end, I started treating it like a photography sim, just focused on composing shots of the world’s decaying beauty like an apocalyptic photojournalist, and found that a more satisfying way to play. 

I’m less up for the laughing nihilism of Sludge Life 2 this time around, but I still enjoyed bathing in the absurdity of its cold, dead world — at least for a little while.

Sludge Life 2 is available now on PC.

Pros:

Fantastic, mood-setting electronic soundtrack from rapper Doseone

Beautifully grotesque art style

Packed with absurd jokes and sight gags

Traversing the new map feels great

Cons:

No significant improvements over the first Sludge Life

Narrative feels shallow

Score: 7/10

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