Goodbye Volcano High Review:

 
DISCLAIMER: This review will be very in depth and spoil fuckin everything so if you want to play the game do NOT read this post. you've been warned.



I recall back in 2021, A game made the rounds on a few meme pages called "Snoot game" It just looked like a visual novel about dinosaurs to my eye so I never gave it much attention, only for me to discover that the games characters were directly stolen from a DIFFERENT game, made as a parody and a middle finger to "Woke" culture.

That game is KO_OP's Goodbye Volcano high.

When I first saw the game itself my first response was "Why all the hate?" Seriously there was more vitriol thrown at this game than I've seen in a LONG time and why? From what I saw it was mostly about it being "Preachy" and having a queer message and a They/Them protag.

Now, I never got embroiled in the games drama, I never played snoot game and didn't pay much attention to GVH either until I decided to give it a play when I saw it on steam's indie page.

Goodbye volcano high centers around Fang, A non binary pterodactyl with dreams of becoming a musician once out of their final year of high school, planning a tour with their band Worm Drama, but conveniently this is right when a giant meteor is hurtling towards them, and now you have to make the most of the time you got left with your friends and family. 

there's a few choices which all carry pretty good weight considering the ticking timebomb. Do you put the band aside to try and chase crushes or family time? do you try to hold it together and chase your dream while you can all while the world is literally ending? Do you spend time with Reed or trish or Sage or Naser? you have to choose. and no matter what it feels bittersweet. an apt analogy for growing up and adulthood I may add.

First things first, the games artstyle? Top shelf in my humble opinion. It's colorful, wonderfully drawn and animated and oozes something a lot of big games lack, Soul. from the art alone I could tell there was a lot of love and care put into this game.

But art is one thing how does it play? the game is largely a visual novel, which isn't everyone's cup of tea understandably, but myself I like those types of games. You get to choose Fang's choices and dialogue options which effect certain outcomes of the game, however the game always ends generally the same. that being that in the end everyone dies.

But aside from the VN stuff GVH is also a musical rhythm game. I'm not the biggest fan of music games, mostly because I suck at them, but GVH has a very unique setup, during the music segments you largely move your controllers stick in the direction of the white dots in time with the music, Along with that you press buttons at the right time, and also pull both sticks down at certain times.

 some rhythm game purists might not like this but honestly I kinda dig it, it makes sense to my weirdly constructed brain. As for the music itself it's honestly fantastic, The music is done by Dabu and the singing by the incredibly talented Brigitte Naggar, better known as Common holly, an indie musician from Canada who has a gorgeous voice that fits fang very well and the music is so well done I actually listen to it from time to time in daily life. my favorites being "Don't call" and "Reunion" 

GVH follows a lot of teen angst regarding relationships, gender identity, and dreams in the face of the cold ruthless son of a bitch that is real life. you get a good look at Fang's life throughout the game, their relationship with their parents who often use their dead name and ultimately don't share the same enthusiasm for their dream of making music that THEY do, which is a universal experience that I'm sure all of us have went through in some way shape or form.

So exploring some of these, the gender/sexuality stuff?  the way people were talking about it I honestly thought It'd be in every other sentence and used for virtue signaling and LGBTQ+ community brownie points, but in reality while it's THERE and integrated, and a major part of the game I found it far from being preachy, it's just... part of fangs identity, it's who she is and she struggles with it in a world that ultimately doesn't fully get it. There are of course other LGBT characters such as Rosa and Sage who are transgender and Reed who is gay but again it's not pushing anything onto the player it's just... who they are.

you get the option to hang out and discover more about everyone throughout the game leading to several different paths, and I honestly find most of the characters to be very well fleshed out and likeable, the only one of the main cast I found to be outright insufferable was stella, she's a witchy girl who's into tarot which is a personal "Ugh" thing for me, but that's just a me thing I know a lot of people love her.

The game has it's flaws, namely being the occasional animation glitch and some characters being less fleshed out than others, but my biggest criticism is the pacing. The game's pacing is a bit quick, If It were up to me I'd have things be a bit more of a slower burn, have a few days of normalcy before even introducing the meteor, and then have like a countdown to the end, but you can complete the entire game in one setting as the main story is like six hours at most, you can stretch it to eight if you go after side objectives but honestly I just think it would've benefitted from being longer.

Still overall I enjoyed GVH and the story it told, it scratched an itch that went unscratched since Night in the woods came out. and I honestly think it deserved way better than it got. 

The game is STILL pretty divisive, according to google users only 50% liked it

As for the swarm of hate? without provoking the great beast of the internet, It's largely because of 4chan.

It's known that 4chan is basically the internets toilet, the entire site is a mix of porn, slurs, and overall negativity. the only thing it has going for it in MY eyes is that it's anonymous. And when 4Chan saw that GVH had left leaning politics, queer characters, and was stuck in development hell? naturally they decided to make their own game that blatantly stole the characters and told their own story, where there are NO good endings where fang gets to be They/Them. Of the games 4 endings (Correct me if I'm wrong) the two good endings involve Fang getting rid of their They/them pronounds and the two bad endings, they keep their pronouns, one of the endings ends with them struggling in a band and probably being an addict, while the other involves them shooting up their school and committing suicide. Not exactly wholesome. 

and it's truly a shame that Snoot game got as big as it did, I saw more about snoot game than I ever did GVH by way of memes and internet stuff, any time GVH WAS brought up most people said that GVH ripped off snoot game and that Snoot game was better. 

Not much else to say, it's a tragic story of a good game, ripped apart by memes and trolling. Still GVH has a very loyal fanbase and deserves to be remembered and played for it's positive messages and equal parts heartwarming and heart wrenching story rather than it's unfortunately successful parody.