Goodbye Volcano High2023

[copied by Steam] Goodbye Volcano High is, at first glance, a teen drama Visual Noval. At second glance, a tiny (and relatively unpretentious) rhythm game hides within the game. There are many things that GVH does right but also a lot of things that go into your pants. A neutral recommendation would be appropriate for this game again. First of all, there's the obvious -- queer, anthropomorphic teenage Dinos sponsored by the Canadian State Media Fund. Male men, Grifters and YouTubers who cull on a 1992 Mega Man, and hold 2D 8bit Sidescroller as the peak of gaming, will immediately roll their eyes and see another Wokes game - you know what? Just don't play it. GVH was (again) criticized (only by alt right Twitter) for being funded by taxpayers’ money. However, it is obvious that the state rather promotes harmless dino coming-of-age stories than, for example. Doom. Okay, if that were out of the way, now I can write about the story. This is, unfortunately, quite shallow and not particularly creative and at the same time weakly written. We follow Fang, a teenage Dino Dame, who plays in a band with her best friends Trish and Reed and wants nothing more than to get big with them. One possibility would be the annual caldera festival, a festival for young and up-and-coming dino musicians. Were it not for the news that a meteorite is moving towards Earth and the dinosaurs cannot stop it. The story describes a classic teen drama with all the classic tropes that go with it. Intrigues, lovestories, music, friends, etc. GVH neither reinvents the formula nor rewrites it particularly strikingly. It is simply a simple and low-turn story, in which our decisions unfortunately have very little influence on the overall course. In the end, Fang naturally asks himself the question "Who am I?" and "Is it worth giving up xyz to reach zyx?"... You've seen everything somewhere before. Nevertheless, most of the characters are sympathetic and written quite funny. However, it often seems as if the story was written like a Taylor Swift song and was a millennial at work and had written a story from a teenage perspective, with the author already nearly 40. Overall, however, the "cringe factor" is low, most dialogues seemed realistic, albeit directly taken from the theater class. The only really annoying thing about the story was that there was a one-hour pen-and-paper one-player in the middle, where you had to participate (ergo play along and make "decisions"). This was 1. much too long and 2. little interesting and unfortunately did not contribute anything to the story, so I was surprised that it was 2x. Personally, the story didn’t really speak to me. However, I can imagine that another target group can be touched by her, I am thinking of women read people between 14 and 24 years old. The voiceacting is completely in English and unfortunately very weak. Not only are they mixed differently, the overall quality of the speakers is simply not good. You notice that most speakers have not yet gained much experience in the field of video games. Since it is a Visual Noval, the gameplay, if you can call it that, is very shallow. Unlike in other "choose your own adventure" games, the choices and frequency of these are very flat. In few cases (to be honest, none at all) does our failure or decision have a direct impact on the story, as the characters usually refute the episodes themselves or, against the player's will, change decisions or even say something completely different than in the decision possibilities. From time to time, in the passages where the band meets and plays together, you can play a kind of rhythm game. You simply have to tap in the respective direction from which points appear or press the right button at the right time. These passages loosen up the game a bit and offer minimal variety, but are very simple and basically impossible not to pass. Finally, it can be said that Goodbye Volcano High and a Visual Noval with heart, but almost 30€ are simply too much for the bid. The game has hardly any bugs, looks quite cute and speaks to important topics for growing teens but the flat story, the weakening writing with partly amateur voiceacting and the little gameplay still strike an immense notch in the wood, so I can recommend GVH only conditionally. The thumb up is more of a middle thumb between top and bottom. .

Translated from German·Show original