Goodbye Volcano High is partly a rhythm game, but mostly a visual novel about queer teenage dinosaurs coming to terms with the end of the world as they know it. You play as nonbinary musician Fang, a somewhat goth winged pterodactyl who is trying to shepherd their band, Worm Drama, into a Battle of the Bands that could lead them all to stardom. There’s also a meteor hurtling towards Earth that threatens to eradicate them all, which leads many of these teenage dinosaurs, understandably, into crippling existential dread and anger. The meteor obviously parallels the mass extinction event that wiped dinosaurs from the face of the Earth, so you can guess where the game goes.
As the game is primarily a visual novel, most of the gameplay revolves around choosing dialogue from Fang’s perspective, guiding how they react to the people and world around them and which relationships they strengthen. A lot of the game takes place over text messages, which is true to what it’s like to be a teenager in modern times. You also get to play Worm Drama’s music through rhythm game mechanics, in gameplay that is simultaneously frustrating and thrilling.
Related:Starfield Isn’t Woke, You’re Just Afraid Of The Future
The best part of Goodbye Volcano High is, by far, the soundtrack. Composer Dabu, best known for their composing work on Boyfriend Dungeon and Dwarf Fortress, has collaborated with Common Holly to create a marvellous collection of indie rock bangers. I got heavy Phoebe Bridgers and boygenius vibes from the soundtrack, making me root all the more for Fang and their band, Worm Drama, to succeed. With earworms like Don’t Call, the haunting piano piece Won’t Forget, and the gorgeous melodies of Fang_wip, it’s hard not to enjoy every opportunity to hear the band perform.
It’s a shame, then, that the rhythm mechanics are so annoying. You have to move your joystick in the direction of the beats coming from the top and sides of the screen, as well as press action buttons when indicated by an outer circle meeting the inner circle. You also have to take notes of arrows, using both joysticks to move in the indicated direction when the arrows overlap. I play a lot of rhythm games, and I can definitely catch a beat, but it’s almost impossible to actually catch every note as it’s played because there’s no way to adjust for audio latency. I turned on a setting called ‘generous timing’ that gave me more leeway to make gameplay choices and catch beats during rhythm gameplay, but I still found myself struggling, and it felt like I was juggling a lot of disparate elements at once instead of being able to enjoy the music and the gameplay.
The game’s UI gets in its way a lot, causing ample frustration as I tried to figure things out on my own. You can choose lyrics while writing songs, and you’ll hear audio samples of the line you’ve chosen, but it’s not clear that you’re selecting lyrics at first – I didn’t actually realise I could scroll through the lyrics until much later in the game. Quicktime events aren’t indicated well either. Early in the game, you can let your teacher take your phone from you and you have to mash a button to stop her from taking it, but that’s not displayed on screen anywhere either.
The game is fairly buggy in general, which is worrying considering I played it at launch. On PS4 at least, continuing conversations over texts won’t make the UI scroll down to see what Fang is typing, and you may’t scroll till the conversation is already over. The backgrounds take a while to pop in, there’s plenty of clipping and bad lip syncing, and I had to quit the game and replay scenes multiple times due to game-breaking bugs. These are things that can be patched out, but unfortunately, the bugs aren’t the worst part of the game.
I went into Goodbye Volcano High hoping I would love it as much as I loved games like Night in the Woods and Life is Strange, but a lot of things got in the way. Technical issues aside, I found myself often thrown off by the hit-or-miss quality of the voice acting, especially in the first act of the game. The pacing was stilted too, both within scenes with dialogue sometimes having inappropriately long pauses between lines and middling comedic timing, and at a more macro level, with the game only really becoming compelling at the end of the second act.
The game eventually begins to incorporate a fictionalised version of Dungeons & Dragons called Legends & Lore, which has little impact on the overall narrative until the very last session and isn’t particularly enjoyable or interesting. A lack of background music till the game’s third act also makes the first two acts feel empty.
I’m most disappointed about the game’s story, however. The narrative is an obvious allegory for being a young person and trying to live a meaningful life while being anxious about the end of the world – as someone who feels constant stress about climate change, this should resonate with me, but it doesn’t. The writing and characters are so earnest that it’s hard to look at, but that’s how teenagers are. Maybe I’m jaded, but that earnestness doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance when it comes to the game’s real themes of finding community and choosing what really matters… in this case, friendship. Using teenage drama to amplify a larger existential concern could have worked, but in this case, it felt trite because of the writing and voice acting. It’s twee in tone, and far less poignant than it could have been.
There are parts of this game that are highly relatable. You can scroll through social media and see what are essentially Tweets (or Posts, thanks Elon), mostly about the impending meteor impact, that capture Twitter (sure, X) culture with hilarious accuracy. The third act also shines, with tensions between characters finally bubbling over and leading to huge blowouts that feel very true to the nature of teenage friendships. Fang’s relationship to their parents and brother Naser also feel very complex, more than any other relationship they have with the other characters. But none of this is enough to carry the weight of the game’s slow first acts or make up for the game’s unrealised thematic potential, and that’s a shame. What could’ve been a meaningful meditation on the importance of community turned out half-baked. The seeds of something great were there, but it never quite had the payoff it deserved.
Goodbye Volcano High
WHERE TO PLAY
Goodbye Volcano High is a narrative adventure from KO_OP, and sees you play as Fang. Their last year of high school is full of trials and tribulations, but the added stress of the end of the world isn’t helping. A full voice cast and beautifully animated scenes complement a branching story.
Score: 2.5/5. A PS4 code was provided by the publisher.
Next:Starfield’s Space Travel Is Much Better Than You Think It Is
