No video game has captured the existential dread of the last three years as well as Goodbye Volcano High, especially for queer and non-cis people. The visual novel/rhythm game is a triumph of interactive storytelling right when it is most relevant.
The game follows Fang, a non-binary pterosaur who has spent the summer brooding alone over goth songs for their band, Worm Drama. With school back in session, Fang tries to inspire their bandmates to take their garage act in a new direction so they can win a Battle of the Bands and go on a real tour. Unfortunately, everyone is more worried about the asteroid heading toward Earth.
The gameplay is standard visual novel stuff containing dialogue trees and relationship defining choices. There is only one ending, so those choices aren’t super impactful. That said, the writing is superb to the point that they still feel meaningful. It doesn’t hurt that Fang’s voice actor is Lachlan Watson (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), who turns in one of the best gaming vocal performances of the last decade. Watson makes you love Fang immediately.
Where Goodbye Volcano High excels the most is its presentation. Calling it a visual novel is selling it short. It’s a visual novel the way Dragon Lair was a visual novel in that everything is so seamless it’s easy to forget you’re playing a game. Fang and their fellow students are extremely well animated, with expert framing and clever cuts that fool the player into thinking they’re watching something with a lot more motion than they actually are.
It’s only in long shots with walking that the illusion falls apart. The first week of release also has a fair amount of clipping bugs and abrupt scene jumps that feel glitchy. It’s not game breaking, but they do pull a player out of the drama a bit.
Fang’s rock star dreams help give the game some mechanical stakes. The rhythm aspect is amazing from an audio/video standpoint, though somewhat janky from a mechanical one. Even after three hours, I was still having trouble giving the game what it wanted in the rhythm minigames. I think that developer KO_OP went a little too far in trying to make these parts not as difficult, and the result is a weird limbo where you feel punished for having quick reflexes. Considering that doing poorly in the sections doesn’t seem to really impact the progress, it’s not a huge thing, but it could have been better.
On the other hand, the songs themselves are complete bops. Dabu (Winding Worlds, Dwarf Fortress) teams up with Brigitte Naggar on vocals to craft a set of tunes for Worm Drama. The game industry has spent the last decade forcing quiet, heartfelt musical moments into interactive narratives, so it’s nice to see that actually made part of the plot instead of a just an excuse to show off the singing talents of the voice actors. I’ve said for years that adventure games all need a mechanical gimmick to elevate them, and playing songs in Goodbye Volcano High checks that off perfectly.
The story is very much a post-COVID outbreak one. Though the game was in development long before the pandemic, the slow approach of the end of Fang’s world has a lot of parallels to the widespread death and destruction we have all lived through. The game constantly asks whether life should even go on in the face of a cataclysm.
Fang not only has to deal with that dread, but also with their parents not accepting their gender and name. It makes Fang a melancholy figure, but also a hopeful one. They have a dream of stardom and real life, and they refuse to let even the end of the world take that from them. It’s a cheesy message, but a welcome one.
This game shouldn’t work this well. It’s like every caricature of social justice gaming and queer meme culture was thrown in a blender and poured into a 2000s web cartoon. It wears influences like Gone Home, Life is Strange, and Night in the Woods as ostentatiously as a Texas senior wears a homecoming mum. This should have been cringe as hell.
But it’s not. It’s utterly delightful and moving. KO_OP has elevated the visual novel.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Goodbye Volcano High is available today on PlayStation 4/5 and Steam for $29.99.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
